


Against The Wall

by papofglencoe



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Mistaken Identity, Neighbors, New York City, Romantic Comedy, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-06-02 22:31:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6585199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papofglencoe/pseuds/papofglencoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a new neighbor moves into the apartment next door, Katniss Everdeen's walls get rocked and rattled on a nightly basis. But can a certain baker tear them down altogether?</p><p>A modern AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Modern AU. Rated E for explicit language, graphic sex, and potentially offensive slang. Contains direct and revised quotes from The Hunger Games books and movies. With many thanks to my betas @dandelionsunset, @jennagill, @pookieh, my pre-readers @everlylark and @eala-musings, and to @javistg for being a gracious host and all-around mensch. All mistakes and errors are mine. Sadly, The Hunger Games is not.
> 
> Contains lyrics from “Anecdotes” by Joanna Newsom.

He moved in on a Saturday morning at the asscrack of dawn.

It was the grunting that woke her up, some strange man’s voice barking things like “pivot!” and “higher,” and “no, no, you go first” from the narrow hallway outside her apartment. Katniss rubbed the crust from her eyes, impatiently gouging her index finger into each corner, and laid there, belligerently tangled in her sleep-rumpled sheets, grimacing from the commotion in the hall. A small army, by the sound of it, was hauling furniture into the empty apartment next door. She could hear their names— _Mellark_ , _Finnick_ , and _Hawthorne_ — and although it was bad form to judge people by the sound of their voices, she had the distinct impression that the brothers of Delta Tau Chi were moving into sweet Mags’ old apartment.

She missed her former neighbor already, the afternoon invitations to tea (that Katniss never accepted but appreciated all the same), and the peace and order of the hours the elderly woman kept. She even missed the smell of the mothballs, although, in the scorching heat of late summer, she could still detect traces of it baking its way out of the pores of the walls. When Mags had passed away and her apartment was posted for let, Katniss had hoped that the faded floral wallpaper and the spare room that had been earmarked for Mags’ porcelain doll collection would be a magnet for another sweet old lady.

No such luck, it turned out. That was the downside to living in a rent-controlled apartment in a gentrifying neighborhood— the invasion of the casually affluent hipsters and frat boys who saw an affordable apartment in a working class neighborhood as an opportunity to gain street cred while still living a short commute from their shiny new jobs and the glitzy shops and restaurants further downtown.

Climbing out of bed, she slipped on her robe and wrapped it around her like body armor, tiptoeing over to her front door and pressing her ear lightly to the wood, curious to glean whatever information she could about the new tenants in apartment 451.

“Mellark, so help me god this better be the last time your ass moves.”

She heard a quiet, rumbling chuckle, followed by a breathless sort of pant. The answering voice sounded as strained as the man who had just spoken, but his voice had a softer, gentler timbre. “Well, this definitely isn’t a permanent situation,” he said. “I think...” his voice broke off as a loud crash reverberated through the hallway, so loud it shook the floorboards even where Katniss was standing. She pinched the bridge of her nose and bit the inside of her cheek, bitterly regretting the bottle of cheap red wine she’d split with her friend Johanna the night before.

“Shit. Finnick, are you okay? Okay. Here, on the count of three, lift again. One, two, three—” He grunted as he hoisted up whatever furniture had just fallen, and Katniss couldn’t help but appreciate how, through the door, his noises sounded vaguely pornographic. “As I was saying,” he continued, “I think you’ll understand how this is less than an ideal living situation.”

Katniss tried not to let his words sting. Sure, the neighborhood was far from pretty. The streets were riddled with potholes, the buildings were covered in street art and flyers, and the residents barked at each other in languages no one else around them seemed to understand, a ceaseless babble of “fucks yous” and “saco de weas” and “hatichat harahs,” but it was _her_ neighborhood. She didn’t want to see it through the eyes of a stranger. It might be far from an ideal living situation, but it was what was _real_ , a vibrant and authentic, diverse community.

The voices grew fainter as the men shuffled down the hall. “No no no— I’m deciding it,” the man named Finnick quipped. “You’re stuck here forever. Because there’s no way I’m hauling all this shit down five flights of stairs again.”

“Fair enough,” the other man conceded. “Or I might just decide to burn it all. There's no telling what’s going to happen on this couch, am I right?”

She shot a resentful glance toward her own couch— there was nothing to tell about what had happened on it because nothing ever had. That’s what beds were for, she reasoned, although that piece of furniture didn’t exactly have very many stories to tell either.

Katniss waited for the heavy footsteps to pass her door before she hazarded a peek out into the dimly lit hallway. The two men were working to maneuver a black leather couch that screamed “tacky bachelor pad” around the corner and into the apartment. The tall, bronze-haired one disappeared from sight as they rotated the couch, but she had several moments to take a hard look at the other one. From where she stood, she could see the muscular planes of his back through the translucent fabric of his sweat-soaked shirt. He was wearing a Mets baseball cap— another strike against him— over a mop of shaggy, sweaty blond hair.

“Finn, can you move a couple inches over that way? I can almost fit.”

 _So that one’s Mellark_.

She had to admit that, despite the disruption to her sleep schedule that he had caused, his apparent provincialism, and his tragic taste in sports teams, she didn’t have a bad view from behind.

No. There was no doubt about it: the guy had a great ass.

The view got even better as he turned, hoisting the couch up higher using one of his thick thighs. From the side she could appreciate the sharp cut of his jaw, balanced by the gradual slope of his nose. She could see the toned bicep of his left arm strain as he firmly but gently pushed the couch through the narrow door frame, careful so that it wouldn’t nick the wood molding.

He looked like an Abercrombie model, wholesome and fresh-faced and built and irritatingly _boyish_. At the thought, something ignited in her stomach, an inconvenient and uncomfortable sensation she didn’t have the time or energy to consider. It spread throughout her body, an uncontained fire, and made her shaky and weak. She silently closed the apartment door behind her, leaning against the wood, and used the sleeve of her robe to wipe at the beads of sweat that had already begun to form on her brow in the humid morning air.

She eyed her couch and exhaled heavily, missing her old neighbor for reasons she thought best to leave unnamed.

***************************

They started fucking on Monday night, the guy next door and the stilettoed, scantily-clad blonde he’d brought home with him from the bar.

She could tell they were shitfaced. She’d heard them get off the elevator, the woman’s vapid laughter, some grotesque parody of Janice from _Friends_ , carrying over the calming, ethereal tones of Katniss’ Joanna Newsom record. Her heels clacked noisily, unevenly on the wooden floorboards of the hall, and when a large thud hit the wall outside her door, Katniss crept over to it and glanced through the peephole to see what all the ruckus was about.

It was Mellark— as far as she could tell, he was the only tenant next door, after all— pinning the blonde to the wall and swaying as he ground his pelvis against hers. From this angle, all Katniss could see was his back and broad shoulders, his hand pressed against the wall to steady himself, one of the woman’s bare legs hitched up and wound tightly around his ass (slightly less glorious than she had remembered from moving day), and the blonde’s hair as she buried her face in his shoulder, her rat’s nest of a bouffant looking like it reeked of Aquanet and cigarettes.

His hand traced the contour of the woman’s calf, smoothly working its way upward along her thigh to hike her sequined minidress over her waist, and disappearing in the narrow space between their bodies. Katniss didn’t need to guess what his hand was doing; the woman’s head fell backward against the wall, her eyes shut and mouth forming an “o” of ecstasy.

 _Fucking perfect_. Glimmer— as Katniss had decided to christen her, since the woman looked like a stripper covered in glitter and sequins and sparkling costume jewelry— wasn’t just a loudmouth. She was a moaner.

“Oh my gawd, yes,” she pleaded in abandon, bucking her hips. At the friction, he leaned forward, suckling roughly on the exposed skin of her shoulder and dragging his tongue greedily along the column of her slender neck like she was a melting popsicle.

“Shit, baby, you’re so wet,” he groaned, his voice reverberating through the empty hall. From this angle, Katniss could see the muscles of his triceps flexing as his fingers worked her, roughly, pumping in and out of her over and over, a furious rhythm that had both of them crying out to the night.

 _Great. He’s a moaner, too_. She clenched her teeth in annoyance and her thighs in desire— the hunger that was coursing through her veins, heating her, annoyed her even more than the careless show taking place outside her apartment. It had been a while since a man had touched her like that, possibly never, if she was being frank, and she didn’t need to be reminded that her hymen had probably found a way to regenerate itself.

She was considering whether to open her door to bitch at the couple or simply to yell through it when a girl who lived down the hall, a savagely beautiful bombshell Katniss only knew as 406, swung open her door and staggered up to them, glowering viciously with her arms crossed against her chest. She hovered close to them like some sort of zombie, her face pale and her long hair matted and gnarled from sleep, looking like she’d like nothing better than to rip their mouths off their faces with her bare teeth.

The man turned his head slowly toward 406, looking her up and down as if he didn’t know he had another woman’s crotch pressed up to his. “Care ta’join?” he asked, his voice thick and slurred from booze. _Well, the guy’s got a type_ , Katniss thought wryly. Big boobs and blond hair. Through the distorted glass of the peephole, Katniss could only make out the familiar line of his jaw. It had looked sharp on Saturday; tonight it looked cutting.

“Give me a fuckin’ break,” 406 snapped, already backing away from the leering man. “Just take it inside already, will ya? Some of us gotta work in the morning.”

“Fine, fine. Have it your way.” He held his hands up in surrender, Glimmer’s leg falling from his waist and back down to the floor with a heavy, unceremonious _clomp_. Katniss could see her tugging her dress back down over her ass, looking completely unfazed by the interruption to their foreplay. After 406 retreated back into her apartment, Mellark turned to Glimmer. “Remind me not to ask _her_ for a cup ‘a sugar ‘sanytime noon.”

Glimmer laughed loudly, obnoxiously, and playfully swatted at his shoulder, missing it completely— a feat, since his shoulders were massive.

“C’mon, baby.” He grabbed her by her arm and steered her down the hall, out of sight of Katniss’ door. She could hear the jangling of his keys, the way they clattered to the floor, his head hitting the door as he bent to retrieve them, their laughter as he cussed under his breath, the clicking of his apartment door as it shut behind them.

After a moment of pregnant silence, standing stock-still as she waited for the next disruption, Katniss exhaled heavily. _Well, that should be an end to it_ , she thought gratefully. She shot a look at her textbooks scattered across her kitchen table and picked up the book closest to her, _Principles of Accounting_ by Beetee Latier, PhD. She’d been working doubles at the restaurant in addition to taking twelve credits this semester to try to wrap up her associate’s, and even though she was beyond exhausted, she’d been sleeping like shit. Her dreams, if they came at all, were populated with the same nightmares she’d been having since her sister died: fire, smoke, and ash, the way the flock of blackbirds looked flying away into the hazy sky, all the twisted metal, and the blood. Prim’s blood. So much more blood than she knew any person could have, pools and rivulets of it that fanned out and spread into the cracks of the pavement. The years hadn’t done anything to numb the pain, even if her scars had healed.

Here was to hoping that Beetee Latier’s sage wisdom was enough to knock her out.

She’d just drifted off, the open book still pressed to her chest, when a heavy knock on the wall jolted her awake. It was followed rapidly by another; it sounded like furniture on the the other side, in her neighbor's apartment, being shoved against the wall.

The motherfuckin’ headboard.

It was hard to say what started first: the moaning, low and deep guttural, a man’s voice begging, “Yeah, baby, just like that. Your mouth feels so good on my cock,” or the headboard knocking against the wall as the person fellating him rocked in a steady, repetitive motion.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She laid there, staring at the water-stained ceiling, hating this Mellark guy and everything else in the world, even though there was nothing she could do about any of it.

At some point the sucking turned to fucking, and Glimmer the Groaner began to pant his name: _Rye_. Like a warped record trapped in the same groove, a constant string of “Ryes” filled the thick, balmy night air. _Harder, Rye. Faster, Rye. Right there, Rye. Oh yeah, Rye. Yes, Rye. Oh yes, Rye. Yes. Yes. Ryyyyyyyyyye_.

It wasn’t long before he was moaning with her, his voice lower and raspier than she remembered it from the other day, like he’d suddenly developed a two-pack-a-day habit and a penchant for whiskey.

It went on for hours, one orgasm after another, the headboard pummeling the wall the entire time, Glimmer’s pants turning into shrieks as they made their way through what must have been the whole of the Kama Sutra.

In the early hours of the morning, Katniss finally fell asleep, her dreams filled with Prim’s final screams and accompanied by the howls of the people on the other side of the wall.

Tonight everything screamed in her dreams.

***************************

_But inasmuch as that light is loaned,_

_insofar as we’ve borrowed bones,_

_must every debt now be repaid_

_in star-spotted, sickle-winged night raids,_

_while we sing to the garden, and we sing to the stars,_

_and we sing in the meantime,_

_wherever you are?_

The voice was so sweet Katniss couldn’t bear to hate it. It made her think of Prim, of little hands— childlike claws— scrabbling and clutching at her ribs, tickling her until she opened her eyes one by one, squinting against the harsh glare of the light filtering in through the crooked, bent blinds in their bedroom. “Katniss, wake up. It’s morning,” she’d say, her voice filled with wonder, like the earth might one day stop on its axis.

But eventually it does stop for each of us.

When she opened her eyes, she was alone in her apartment, the fading strains of the song swallowed by the early morning traffic down in the street. Such delicate sounds should never be expected to sound the alarm.

Katniss rolled out of bed, achy from lack of sleep, and stumbled into the shower. Finally, at the tender hour of 4:00 a.m., the sex decathlon next door had ceased. When she turned off the water, she could hear him lumbering around his apartment, his heavy tread taking him from room to room. She didn’t know how he could be awake after last night, much less standing. Certainly he’d be chafed. Saddle sore. Hobbled with a broken back. Half of her had wondered if he’d been fucked to death; the other half just hoped it.

Her shift at the diner started at five, and since she didn’t have the time or energy to fuss with her hair, she left it wet, opting to comb it with her fingers and to plait it into two simple braids that could be pinned up before her shift. She shimmied into her work uniform, a tight plaid dress that accentuated the one or two curves she had. It was meant to look mid-century retro— she worked at the singing diner in midtown— but she thought it made her look like a vintage hussy, someone who’d sell you cigarettes out of a tray in some gaudy speakeasy, not someone you wanted singing “Summer Nights” to your children as they slurped down chocolate shakes.

She shambled out the door, viciously stabbing the elevator call button, and waited for the elevator to arrive. The cables whirred in the shaft, the tired elevator pinging as it ascended from the lobby at a crawl. _Ping. Ping. Ping. Shiiiiit_.

Down the hall, she heard a door open and the familiar clacking of heels as someone stepped over the threshold and into the hallway. Katniss didn’t have to look to know who was approaching; the sound was from the same direction as her apartment. As _his_ apartment next door.

She’d see soon enough what the walk of shame looked like on Glimmer the Groaner. A second set of footsteps accompanied her, the same heavy tread she’d heard through the walls. It was loud and liable to waken the entire floor beneath them, but it sounded like he was purposely walking well behind the blonde. _Oh, how the light of day changes things_ , Katniss thought to herself, feeling more than slightly smug about this grotesque parody of human intimacy gone awry.

When the elevator arrived, she stepped into it hastily and considered repeatedly jamming her finger on the “door close” button in the futile hope that maybe, just maybe, something in this world would cooperate with her for once. After last night there was nothing and no one she felt up to dealing with today. She reconsidered when she realized, after all, that she sort of wanted to see this trainwreck of a morning after and how it played out when people realized they’d just slept with the walking embodiment of a Disney villain.

Cruella stepped on first, lipstick traces still smudged across her lips and cheeks, her hair a matted mess loosely gathered into a ponytail that did nothing to tame the strands sticking out in every direction on each side of her head. Her face was puffy from lack of sleep, her skin a sickly shade of gray from the hangover already wracking her brain. She teetered into the back corner, kitty-corner to Katniss, and leaned heavily against the rail that spanned the back wall of the elevator. Her dress was so short that, as she leaned, Katniss could see Glimmer had lost her underwear last night somewhere between the hallway and Rye’s bedroom.

Then Gaston stepped on. His eyes darted up, meeting hers briefly, and flitted away. They were blue, shockingly blue, as bright as the wretched Mets cap he was wearing again this morning. She hadn’t expected him to have eyes that color— they almost made him look guileless. He stood across the elevator from Katniss, several feet in front of Glimmer, and avoided looking at the beaver show by staring awkwardly ahead of him, clutching a hunter green polo shirt in both of his hands, wringing the fabric like the cotton had done something to royally piss him off. Aside from the purple rings beneath his eyes, he gave no indication that he’d gone on a bender the night before or had spent the night giving out free dick rides to the woman behind him. His hair looked freshly washed, his khakis pressed and clean. He looked so put together and normal, nothing like the manwhore sex demon she’d witnessed last night.

He was the devil trying to kill her, Katniss knew it. She could feel it in her bones.

...But he didn’t look that bad.

She swallowed and jammed the “door close” button, even though the doors had already begun to groan shut, because the air in the elevator was charged with tension and she found she didn’t want to be any part of it. Let them figure out how to handle their goodbyes and the insincere promises to call each other. This wasn’t her scene.

“So… you’re off to work?” he asked in a hoarse voice, clearing his throat.

Katniss crossed her arms under her breasts, staring at the lights on the elevator panel, and waited for Glimmer’s reply. If Glimmer was going to work dressed like that, then maybe she was a stripper after all. Couldn't say she’d be surprised.

The elevator pinged twice, but when Glimmer still hadn’t replied, she chanced a look toward him. Her heart jumped— irrationally, maddeningly— when she turned and saw that he wasn’t speaking to Glimmer. He was speaking to _her_. A flush had crept onto his face, and as she looked at him, silently appraising him, it darkened, staining the tips of his ears.

She wanted to ask him who he thought he was, trying to make conversation with her like they were old friends and not total strangers— strangers aside from the inconvenient fact that she knew what sounds he made as he came. “Excuse me?” she challenged, unable to keep the incredulity out of her tone.

“I— uh— wanted to know if you were off to work too.” He held up his polo shirt by way of explanation, and even bunched up in his hand, Katniss could see the scripted font embroidered on it: “Mellark’s Bakery.”

Pretty rich boy owned a bakery. How charming. At least his ass got up early in the morning along with the other plebes.

“No,” she deadpanned. “I’m on my way to 1955. Just gotta hop in the DeLorean first.”

He smiled, the right corner of his mouth hitching up a fraction of a second before the left. She’d heard somewhere that tic made someone right-handed. Or right-brained. She couldn’t remember, except she knew it made him anything but right for her. She pulled at the hem of her uniform, wishing it covered more of her ass.

“Let me guess,” he said, “you work at the Stardust Diner.”

The elevator pinged another floor, and Katniss shifted her weight from one foot to the other, anxious to get off as soon as possible. The way he was looking at her, speaking to her— like he was interested in her— it was all wrong.

“You an actress?” he asked, scratching his forearm. She hated that he made the gesture look sexy, that broad hand moving over a broad arm.

Right in front of the broad he just fucked.

“No,” she muttered, not offering additional explanation. She could sing, yes. That’s how she got the job in the first place. But unlike every other member of the waitstaff— thirsty, ambitious men and women who would stab you in the back to land a gig on Broadway, the job was always just means to an end for her. So she sucked it up and sang “The Leader of the Pack” and walked away at the end of the night, pocketing her tips and dreaming about a day when life might mean something a little more than this.

“Well, you must be very talented, to work there.”

As the elevator reached the ground floor, she tore her gaze away from him and stepped toward the door, in a hurry to walk away, to create some space between them. Because there was no actual fucking way this man had spent the entirety of last night screwing the blonde’s brains out just to try to make conversation with her. Did guys really do that— pick up on other women right in front of their… their… conquests?

She couldn’t believe his chutzpah.

The doors slid open, and she stepped out, not bothering to look back.

She could hear his voice behind her, quietly saying, “Have a nice day,” but she didn’t know if he was saying it to her or to the blonde.

She told herself she didn’t care. That the guy was a total dick. And that she didn’t have time for those games.


	2. Chapter 2

It was never the same girl twice.

Some of them were buxom—endowed with melon-like breasts and curvy, child-bearing hips—brunettes that looked like Bettie Page and bottled blondes who thought they were Marilyn Monroe. And others were waifish and slight, so thin and willowy they reminded her of withered leaves clinging uselessly to a tree in December, holding onto Rye as if a single, ill-timed gust of wind might blow them away. There was no rhyme or reason, no recurring pattern, to the girls he brought home with him, aside from the fact that they were all beautiful. If someone asked her to describe his type, she could sum it up in three words: female, attractive, and willing. As far as she could tell, he fucked women with indiscriminate relish.

But, despite appearances, they were all the same to Katniss. They stumbled and teetered their way down the hall, following Rye to his apartment like eager children deliriously chasing after the ice cream truck. They wanted the good shit he promised to peddle. They needed it. They had to have it. They knew they were going to get it. And, oh, how he gave it. It didn’t matter that, despite the way satisfaction tasted on their lips— that sweet, fleeting gratification—there was nothing nourishing about what he gave to them.

They just wanted a good time. And after they got it, they slinked out in the early hours of the morning, their hair gnarled, hips bruised, lips swollen, and mascara smudged from sweat or tears—no one cared to ask which it was; maybe they didn't know themselves.

Katniss learned something that none of them knew. As she laid in bed, trying to muffle the sounds of their shrieks and grunts and moans and whimpers with her pillow clamped over her head, she quickly discovered that Rye didn’t bother to learn their names or, if he did, he certainly didn’t risk getting caught using the wrong one in flagrante. It was safer for him to call them by a pet name, some smarmy term of endearment that sent moisture rushing between their legs because they believed it meant they were something special to him, that they were more than just another notch in one very notched belt.

To his credit, Rye never repeated the same pet name. Katniss gave him high marks for ingenuity, because a less clever man would have run out of names after half a dozen hookups. She made it something of a game she played along with him, unbeknownst to him, trying to guess what name he’d give to each girl he brought home. The minute she heard their drunken laughter pealing through the hall, she’d creep from the couch or her bed to look through the peephole of her front door to gather clues.

One girl wore a knitted skirt made of something like wool or angora, some ridiculously inappropriate fabric for a sweltering summer night. Katniss branded her “Cashmere” because she looked like the type of girl who would insist on the top shelf of everything: top shelf linens, top shelf liquors, top shelf clothing, and, in the sack, Rye Mellark’s top shelf dick. She was disappointed when he called her “honey tits,” because what could be more common, as ordinary and plentiful, as honey or tits?

She’d had her greatest victory to date when he brought home the fox-faced girl. Her hair had been a tawny shade of red, feathered to frame a pointy, vulpine face. When she heard him call her “foxy” through the open window, she had to bite down on her tongue to suppress a whoop. It was a hollow victory, to be sure, because even though the girl remained silent through their lovemaking, she heard them tumble onto the floor in a fit of passion, their bodies rocking in tandem on the hard surface. She listened to them go on like that for hours, their bones grinding on hardwood as their bodies ground into each other, while her hand rested on the other side of her bed, absentmindedly stroking sheets that remained crisp even in the humid night.

Then there was the petite brunette who walked along, coolly smoking a Djarum like some scheming intellectual, that she had instantly dubbed “Clove.” In bed he called her “sugar,” and Katniss liked to think that maybe he chose the name because of the sweet taste of the spiced tobacco on her breath. He had liked kissing Clove; he moaned loudly in the hall as she laved his tongue with hers, the tendrils of smoke from the cigarette she held curling around them, obscuring their faces. He moaned throughout the night, exactly like that, as the sloppy, wet sounds of their mouths meeting and exploring each other’s bodies wafted through the window. When the foreplay turned to sex, it had been particularly rough— Katniss could hear metal handcuffs clinking against the bedpost, the sharp crack of a hand meeting tender flesh, and a voice crying out in pleasured anguish, a man with a raspy voice pleading “sugar sugar sugar.”

It might have been a pet name, it might have been a safe word, but when Katniss couldn’t stand the pressure mounting between her legs any longer, she finally broke, dipping her hand between her thighs and touching herself at the apex, imagining that the sound of smacking flesh was the pelvis of a man with blue eyes and wavy blond hair smacking against hers as he buried himself inside of her again and again. She came on her own hand, a rush of warmth flowing uselessly on her fingers as she rode out the waves of her orgasm. The woman in the other room came a moment later, banging a palm against the plaster wall, making the picture frame mounted above Katniss’ headboard rattle and sway.

Katniss laid there, listening to Clove’s cries of abandon, feeling her heart slow to a flatline. Somewhere along the way she’d died inside, and she hadn’t realized it until that moment, when she heard what it was to live, when she’d felt it erupt again inside of her, the passion igniting in her belly, the heat spreading from her core, fueling her, feeding her, warming her fingers and curling her toes. She closed her eyes and brushed a hand over one of her still-tautened nipples, imagining that the hand was broad and that the touch was coarse but gentle and that there was a man in this world, maybe next door, who could want her, flawed and damaged as she was, that he could lift her and push her and move her, and he’d be careful not to break her.

When she saw him at the end of the hall the next day, shoving trash down the chute, she knew it was him right away, even with his back turned to her. His blond hair was slicked back the same way he wore it to pick up girls—his hair straightened by some product he’d put into it to tame his waves into submission. It made him look more like Patrick Bateman than the unkempt boy-next-door whose approach to hair care was to stuff it beneath a baseball cap, and the difference was, she had to admit, vaguely jarring. But there was no denying those broad shoulders—shoulders that were made to haul things up and pin things down. No, it was definitely him; even in the dim of the hall and from a distance, she could discern the red weals on the pale skin of his wrists from where the metal of the handcuffs had rubbed him raw.

It was a mercy his back was turned to her because she was terrified of what her face might betray: that he’d made two women simultaneously come last night. That he hadn’t even needed to be in the same room to give her the best orgasm she’d had in years. That she hated him, hated how he was ruining her life, disrupting her sleep, infuriating her, tormenting her. That, despite all that, she’d touched herself at the thought of how he had looked carrying furniture, wearing that stupid Mets cap.

She’d touched herself thinking about him standing next to her in the elevator, imagining that he’d looked at her in front of the girl he’d just spent the night with like _she_ was the only other person in a city of eight-and-a-half million people worth knowing. She’d touched herself thinking about how his hands would feel on her, how her name would sound with his honey-timbred voice. And she was going to do it again, thinking about him, hating herself and hating him, but touching herself until stars exploded behind her eyes and the earth quaked and shook on its axis. She would come silently, gasping, choking back his name because, although she wanted him, she wanted someone infinitely better than him.

No, he could never know any of this, about the effect he had on her.

She silently stepped back into her apartment, unobserved, and deadbolted the door like it could keep her thoughts at bay. The bag of trash she’d meant to throw away slipped uselessly from her hand, and she stripped off her clothes, stepping into the shower, where she touched herself one more time to the thought of him. And afterward, she cried—heaving, gasping sobs that confessed everything to the cold, silent tiles.

She’d never felt more alone in her life, if that's what this could be called. Every day she woke up and crawled out of bed, rubbing the soreness from her tired bones. She went to work, or to school, or to the bar with friends. And then she came home—to this shoebox of an apartment, a space too small for sound to echo off the bare walls. She went through the motions, but none of them had meaning. It wasn’t really life. It was nothing at all, just emptiness and obligation and longing and regret.

And she was so tired of it all.

***************************

Katniss gave him a head start, lingering under the rusted awning of the corner bodega so that she wouldn’t have to talk to him. She had been walking out of the convenience store, still stuffing the half-gallon of milk and package of ear plugs she’d purchased into her reusable shopping bag, when she spotted him walking by. It was the blue baseball cap that gave him away, that belligerently optimistic color that demanded you pay heed to it. He wasn’t exceptionally tall, maybe slightly above average, but as he walked along the crowded sidewalk, something about the way he carried himself made him seem like he was head and shoulders above everyone else.

Maybe it was all the sex—the stinking, blissful cloud of sex that he always seemed to float around on—that drew her attention to him. Or maybe it was the pheromones he was secreting that, despite her best efforts to resist them, nevertheless seeped into every pore of her body, making her want to dry hump his leg like some poorly trained dog.

Today he was dressed casually, and Katniss hated to admit that the look worked for him—or worked for _her_ —in a way that his “down to fuck” evening attire never did: blue jeans that hung just right on his ass, a simple white undershirt, splashed and stained with what looked like food coloring, the sleeves stretched around his toned biceps, and his green work polo clutched and crumpled in his right hand—a hand that looked, for lack of any other word, capable. Hell, it didn’t just _look_ it. She’d heard, she knew, what that hand could do to a woman. And, for some reason, he carried a baguette tucked under his arm like he was strolling through the goddamn streets of Paris.

The combination of his clothes, his confident gait, the carbs, and his unaffected, easy good looks sent a shot of desire directly to her core. She clenched her thighs, trying to ignore the current that sizzled and sparked inside of her, traveling through her limbs, electrifying them. It was absurd how a single glimpse of him could transform her into an uncontrollable live wire, flailing and throbbing for him.

If there was one thing she knew, it was that he could level her with one touch. So she did all she could to evade the man who shared her wall—one thin wall made of two layers of crumbling plaster, a handful of mouldering two-by-fours, and twenty-five years of unrelenting disappointment.

She watched as he nodded and smiled at the homeless man who slept there, the one the locals all referred to as Haymitch the Hobo, before he handed the man the loaf of bread he’d been carrying beneath his arm.

“Mighty swell of you, boy,” the man muttered, his voice as rough and jagged as the shards of glass littered on the ground around him.

Rye smiled and removed his cap to run his fingers through his hair, mussing it every which way, and said something to Haymitch that was swallowed up by the sound of a passing bus. Whatever he said made Haymitch laugh, the heavily lined skin of his weathered face threatening to crack apart at the seams. Katniss had seen him laugh a thousand times—spitefully, snidely, incoherently—but she’d never seen him laugh like that before, like he was sharing some confidence with a comrade. It looked like Haymitch actually _liked_ Rye, and if there was one thing Katniss knew about Haymitch, it was that people were his thing about as much as they were hers. Which is to say he thought they were the worst.

Great. So he could even charm the pants off a cynical hobo.

Rye might have looked her way—she could feel eyes on her, willing her to look up—but she pretended to busy herself reorganizing the contents of her shopping bag (all two of them, already in perfect order). After a moment he continued on, breezing toward the entrance to their building. As he walked away, it felt like a sinkhole had opened up in the sidewalk, swallowing the crowd and half the street. Katniss glanced around, wondering if anyone else felt the desolation, but the pedestrians and cars around her whizzed by, oblivious to the void he made when he’d gone.

She walked over to the wall of the bodega and stood a couple feet away from Haymitch, leaning against the building because, suddenly, her knees didn’t seem up to the task of supporting the rest of her body. The pungent smell of urine fogged the air; she wasn’t sure if came from Haymitch or the cinderblock she happened to be touching. The odor made her light-headed and nauseous—or something did.

“He’s an agreeable one.” Haymitch stuffed a large chunk of bread in his mouth, the smell of liquor heavy on his breath. “Too bad more people ain’t like that.” He glanced at her meaningfully, his voice all insinuation. “You know, you could take a lesson or two outta his playbook in how to make friends and influence people.” He cackled to himself, nearly choking on the bread crumbs. His cough was soupy, like he was drowning in his own lungs. She wouldn’t half-mind if he did, in that moment, however uncharitable the thought might be.

Katniss scowled at Haymitch, failing to see any humor in his remarks. “He’s a little _too_ agreeable, with a few _too_ many lessons in his playbook.” She hated how rattled she was from a simple near encounter with the guy and how uneven her voice sounded talking about him. He was her neighbor, after all. She was going to have to learn how to cope with him coming and going—the former more than the latter, clearly—and to view him as she would any other of her other neighbors—which is to say she would have to learn to ignore and overlook his existence altogether.

The hobo looked at her sidewise, a knowing gleam in his eyes. “Is that so, sweetheart?”

She nodded brusquely and flushed, not really wanting to talk about the parade of lady friends Rye had brought home in the month since he’d moved in. Surely Haymitch must have seen them from his sentry post here on the corner.

“Well, I’ll be damned. You’re hotter than a cat on a tin roof for that boy.” He chewed on the tip of one of his filth-encrusted fingers to gnaw off a hangnail, ripping it with his teeth and spitting it onto the ground before breaking off another piece of bread and cramming it into his smirking, self-satisfied mouth.

She chortled in disgust, searching for a retort but coming up empty-handed. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong or, because she couldn’t honestly do that, that it was none of his fuckin’ business, but she decided there was little point arguing with the homeless man. Let him think what he wanted; he owned nothing else in this world but the few square inches inside his own skull, when it came down to it.

“He seems to have that effect on a lot of women, if you haven’t noticed.” She crossed her arms, hoping to look tougher than she felt. “And I really don’t need to listen to your… insinuations.” She was disappointed the words lacked the bite she’d hoped for, or that that seemed to fall so short of their mark.

Haymitch shrugged. “Suit yourself. But something tells me, and I'm not just sayin’ this because he gives me food while you give me nothing but guff, that you could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him.” He rustled in his back pants pocket, pulling out a small flask that read ‘I <3 NY’ on it, the kind of chazzerai they sell at Times Square and that he’d almost certainly garbage picked, and took a hearty swig from it. Haymitch smacked his lips and held the flask up to Katniss, not in offering but in explanation. “‘Was thirsty,” he said, belching in punctuation.

She frowned and walked away wordlessly, contemplating the worth of the man’s street corner wisdom and chewing on what it was he thought he knew about her neighbor.

When she entered the apartment lobby, she was so lost in thought she almost didn’t notice him standing there. Almost. But there he was, several minutes after she’d seen him enter the building, lingering in front of the mailboxes, methodically flipping through the stack of envelopes in his hands. She wondered for a split second if he had been waiting for her but quickly dismissed the idea as the paranoid workings of a sleep-deprived mind. He had no problem picking up women, and she wasn’t exactly the type he went for. There was no earthly reason why he would be waiting for her. As if she were someone worth waiting for.

But he seemed to be waiting for _someone_. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he just check his mail in the elevator or, like any other normal person, in the privacy of his own apartment?

She wanted nothing more than to sneak past him and be done with it, but she noticed a small brown package from Amazon resting on the dirt-smudged ground in front of the mail slots, the sides of the parcel covered in the familiar tape of their corporate logo. It was terrible timing, expecting a package while the person she was studiously trying to avoid was hovering near the mail. What was worse, though, was that she’d ordered the package _because_ of him; a white noise machine, partially needed to cover up the sound of his sexcapades and partially to cover up the sound of her vibrator’s buzzing—which was about as subtle as a jet plane taking off directly overhead or someone being hacked apart with a chainsaw. And the damn package that sat not more than a foot away from the soles of his worn Timberlands had on the side, scrawled in permanent marker, the numbers “449.” Her apartment number. Mother and fuck.

Her mind made up, she walked across the lobby to retrieve the parcel. As she approached, his head turned toward her, his eyes lighting up in greeting. “Hey,” he said in a friendly tone, all neighborly-like and innocent, like she hadn’t heard that sweet mouth utter words like “cock” and “pussy” about, oh, a thousand times.

“Hey,” she mumbled back, refusing to look at him. She refused to see the way his cheeks were flushed pink from the summer heat or the way his shirt stretched across his pectorals or the fact that he had a smudge of red frosting on the thigh of his left pant leg like someone had hacked into him but, instead of blood, he had only oozed sugar. No. She refused.

Instead she stood shoulder to shoulder with him, refusing to notice the heat radiating off his body and into hers, and stooped down, picking up the package, and tried to cram it hastily into her reusable shopping bag. Except that, of all the times for her fingers to stop working, to turn into real, actual honest-to-fucking-god butter, they’d chosen this exact moment. The straps of her bag slipped down her shoulder, one falling off entirely from the weight of the package, and the small packet of earplugs she’d purchased at the bodega tumbled to the ground, exposed for him to see.

He caught the bag before it slipped off her arm entirely, holding the strap at the crook of her elbow for her, his fingers grazing the sensitive skin on the inside of her arm. She suppressed a shiver. It was the temperature of Dante’s inferno in the lobby, and even though she felt like she was being swallowed whole by flames, the hair at her temples wet with sweat, her shirt damp with perspiration, her skin broke out into goosebumps from his touch.

No wonder he got laid so often.

Each finger on her felt like an incantation—boiling her blood, chilling her skin, soothing her soul, and whipping her spirit into a frenzy. His touch was some sort of insane magic, real Hogwarts-level shit. It had to stop.

Katniss grabbed the straps of her bag and hiked them back up onto her shoulder, trying to mask her vulnerability and embarrassment with annoyance. “Fuck,” she muttered, stooping down to pick up the package of earplugs before he noticed what they were and deduced what they were for.

But he stooped faster, grasping the packet and holding it out to her, a crooked little smile making its way onto his mouth. “Going to a concert?” he asked, sounding like he knew full damn well that she intended no such thing.

It was lucky she was still crouched down on the floor, or she might have fallen from the way he was looking at her. Not like he wanted to fuck her—after all, she didn’t meet two of his three criteria—but like he thought something about her was _cute_. That it was _cute_ , her not being able to handle the sound of his nightly orgasms. At this distance she could see the purple rings beneath his deep blue eyes, how pale and drawn they made them look. Maybe he thought it was _cute_ , too, fucking himself to death.

When she didn’t answer immediately, he added, “Or to a NASCAR race?” His voice was teasing but not unkind. The way he spoke to her made it seem like she was part of some inside joke.

Just not a particularly funny one.

“A shooting range, maybe.” She winced, pretty sure it wasn’t okay to make those sort of jokes to random people but completely unable to help whatever crap came tumbling out of her mouth when she was pissed. She stuffed the package into her bag and stood up so quickly the blood rushed to her head, making the lobby spin and sway around her. She fumbled for her keys and unlocked her mailbox, hopeful that if she bided her time for a moment the world would stop moving around her.

If he felt threatened by her remark, he didn’t show it. He stood back up, chuckling softly, and resumed sorting through his mail, his thick index finger flipping each envelope, one by one, in his hand.

What the earthly fuck was he waiting for?

She tried not to sigh in exasperation, yanking her mail out of the slot and tucking it under her armpit as hastily as she could. Slamming the door of the mailbox shut—which would have been far more dramatic had the door actually been larger than a dollar bill—she stalked over to the elevator, pressing the call button. Fortunately, the elevator was at ground level, and Katniss thought, foolishly as it turned out, that she was going to make her escape from him. But no.

He followed her over to the elevator and stood next to her, his muscular arms crossed against his sculpted chest. Aside from the Mets cap, which deserved to be chucked down the nearest trash chute, he looked like a work of art—granted, the most irritating work of art she’d ever seen. Chiseled out of the finest material, all muscle and sinew and deceptively angelic sweetness, he reminded her of the David. There were a million copies of the David, all over the world, cheap replicas and imitations made of lesser materials. But standing here, next to him, she felt like she had discovered the real one.

And she hated him for it.

As the doors slid open, she looked at him. He was looking back at her, a grin on his face that would almost have seemed bashful if she hadn’t known better.

“After you.” He gestured with his hand, and she spotted the return address on the top envelope: _Columbia Alumni Association_.

“Of course,” she muttered under her breath. She couldn’t help but make a scoffing sound, some choked and bitter laugh, as she stepped onto the elevator. Of course he’d gone to an Ivy League school. She shot another glance at him, taking in the sight of his scuffed worked boots, his food-stained jeans, his simple cotton t-shirt.

Must’ve majored in the humanities. Psychology, maybe. Or English. Something that helped him talk his way into women’s panties, knowing that he’d inherit the family business in the end, no work or sacrifice required on his part. He’d probably coasted on his good looks and genial temperament his entire life.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” he asked, ducking his head down slightly as if to hear her better, a frown on his face.

She nodded toward the envelopes in his hand, unsure why she cared so much. “So you went to Columbia, huh.” It wasn’t a question; it was an indictment. Perhaps it wasn’t fair of her, but after everything he’d already cost her— hours of sleep, money, tears, and whatever little self-regard she’d once had—it was just another insult she couldn’t take, his taken-for-granted privilege.

He looked down at the envelope, his frown deepening, like he didn’t understand. “No. Middlesex County College.”

She blushed instantly at the word “sex” rolling off his tongue, even though it was just a simple syllable taken out of context, and then scowled, looking down toward her shopping bag so that he wouldn’t notice her reaction. Of course this man would find a way to bring sex to the fore of her mind.

She bit the inside of her cheek so that she wouldn’t call him out on his lie. She wanted to tell him that she might have been born and raised in the South Bronx but that she wasn’t illiterate. The name on the envelope said, clear as day, “ _Rye Mellark_ ,” but here he was claiming that he’d gone to some community college in Middlefuckinsex, New Jersey. It wasn’t really any of her business, and she knew it, but the disjunction between what she saw before her, with her own two eyes, and what he told her was deeply upsetting. It was outrageous, the lie, and insulting to her intelligence. But for all she knew he was a pathological liar too, in addition to being an unabashed womanizer. Maybe he couldn’t help it. Maybe he didn’t know what was even real anymore, with all the lies he must tell. It was probably all just part of his game.

His voice called her attention back to him, stormy gray eyes meeting cloudless blue. “Bronx Community College,” he said, nodding to the envelope peeking out of her shopping bag, a bill that she didn’t know how she was going to pay except by selling off another piece of her soul. She supposed she could always ask Glimmer the Groaner for advice on how to start out stripping. “Is that where _you_ went?”

The way he asked her was pointed, like he expected to rate the truth from her, but she didn’t hear confrontation in his tone, only curiosity. _Ironic_ , she thought, _to expect truth from a lie_.

“No,” she told him, hoping that some of the bitterness she felt would seep into her tone so that he would know how hard life could be, how much sacrifice and slaving it took just to crawl your way out of the gutter on your hands and knees. “It’s where I go.”

“That’s cool.” He smiled briefly and said it like he meant it, but when she didn’t smile back, he ripped his gaze away and stared at the ground. From the way he flushed, his jaw clenching and rolling, Katniss could tell she’d made him tense. Good. He deserved to squirm like he’d made her squirm from the minute he stepped into this building. He deserved to bristle from discomfort and shame.

They rode the elevator in an awkward silence, neither of them speaking until they reached the fourth floor. Instead of making small talk, he’d begun to flip through his mail again, for what seemed like the hundredth time. Out of the corner of her eye she read the return addresses—credit card statements, mostly, and, oddly enough, a letter from the Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City. She wouldn’t have pegged a nymphomaniac as someone you’d want as a role model for children, but hey. She supposed the organization would trip over their feet to have wealthy, educated men like him working with disadvantaged youth. At least it looked like a good idea on paper.

When the doors slid open, she heard him take a shaky, shuddering breath. “Well, here’s to the underachievers,” he said, stepping out ahead of her.

She wanted to smirk, to feel satisfied by the bitter undercurrent to his words, at the rejection she heard lingering behind them, but the joy tasted like ash in her mouth. Because she wasn’t an underachiever. She’d spent half her junior year in the hospital after the accident, and that’s why she’d had to drop out. She’d learned at seventeen that hospital bills don’t pay themselves and that dead fathers and broken mothers don’t exactly pay bills either. She’d learned how to bury her sister without burying herself, too, and how to heal her own bones and subsist without starving. She’d learned how to count every loss without drowning from the sheer number.

But something about the way he spoke, the bitterness and sadness in his voice, made her think he knew something about pain, too.

And maybe not just how to inflict it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, with many thanks to my dear betas and friends jennagill, dandelion-sunset, and everlylark. And thanks to all of you for your comments and support! 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr, also as papofglencoe. Come say hi. :)

“You know I love you, right?”

She didn’t wait for an answer before pressing on. “Well, I mean obviously I don’t love love you, because I don’t bat for that team, and, okay, half the time I actually sort of want to murder you because you frustrate the shit out of me, but you do know I love you, right? As in ‘ _I’d cut a bitch for you_ ’ love you?”

Katniss clutched the pint glass in front of her and took a long swill of the amber fluid, chugging as much as she could without wanting to throw up, and then chugging a little more for good measure. Whenever Johanna got started talking like this she knew she wasn’t going to like what her friend had to say. Sometimes, as she had long ago discovered, alcohol was the only thing to make Jo’s words palatable, and even then they were about as easy to stomach as the Bud Light in her glass—tasteless dreck she’d almost always rather go without, but that she had to put up with because it’s what was offered to her.

When she didn’t immediately answer, Johanna kicked her sharply under the bar table. “Right?”

“Ow—fuck it!” Katniss rubbed her shin where her friend’s Doc Marten had made contact, scraping off a chunk of the top layer of skin in the process and leaving behind a sickly piece of dangling, paper-thin flesh. “What did you do that for?” For someone who wasn’t even five feet tall and tipped the scale at all of ninety pounds, the broad could pack a punch. Or kick, as the case may be. “Dammit, Jo. I’m going to bleed from that. But right, sure. I know you love me— whatever good that’s for, clearly. Why do you ask?”

As she blotted her wound with a moistened cocktail napkin, she watched Johanna’s dark eyes dart over to the girl sitting next to her, their friend Cressida. Katniss was annoyed to see the look of understanding flash between the two women, as though this conversation had been pre-discussed. The whole thing suddenly smacked of ‘intervention.’

“Because,” Jo said, “it falls upon me to tell you that you look like total shit.”

“You’re one to talk,” Katniss snapped back defensively, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She tried not to notice that it felt greasy to the touch—she’d been too exhausted the past couple mornings to shower before work. So okay, her hygiene had suffered as a result of the sleepless nights inflicted on her by the travails of blond Satan’s insatiable dick, but she didn’t need a reminder of that from the girl who, for “environmental reasons,” _never_ showered and who insisted on wearing organic deodorant that already smelled like b.o. on the stick (and that smelled a whole hell of a lot riper on the girl).

“Easy now,” Cres chimed in unnecessarily— it was impossible to hurt Johanna’s feelings because, as far as anyone could tell, she’d been born without them— but Cressida was nothing if not fair, and her role when hanging out with both of the other girls was usually to play intermediary and try to defuse the bombs they lobbed at each other when they both got on a roll.

“No, I’m just saying that this is real rich coming from the girl who shaved her head.” Katniss looked guiltily toward Cressida’s half-shaven skull and added, “no offense.” She waited for Cressida to shrug nonchalantly before continuing, “Who shaved her head to rebuke ‘traditional notions of femininity,’ who wears the rattiest clothes she can find from the Salvation Army to protest ‘the capitalistic, slavish imperatives of the fashion industry,’ and who refuses to wear so much as concealer because that would ‘support the wholesale degradation and slaughter of innocent animals.’ Like, I get it, and I support your political... goals... or whatever, Jo, but you’re a walking middle finger toward the very concept of beauty. So why exactly are you bagging on me?” She took a cleansing breath and, having spoken her piece, polished off her beer with more bravado than she felt.

Johanna smirked and looked as pleased as a cat belching canary feathers. “Hey, _I’ve_ got no problem getting fucked, hot stuff.” She held up her left hand, wiggling her fingers in the air at Katniss to display her engagement ring, a simple band made out of turned wood that her fiance Blight had made for her the year prior ( _no wedding date pending, thank you very much_ , they were proud to announce whenever asked, because who would do something as conventional as marry after getting engaged?).

Jo took a swig from her glass and looked around the crowded bar, currently packed with Mets and Yankees fans out to watch the second game of the series. “I’m not talking about beauty—you’re beautiful, believe it or not, and you would be wearing a flaming garbage bag. What I’m saying is that you look tired, overworked, stressed out, overdone,” she raised her voice to yell over the din because, at the end of the day, Jo was nothing if not a malicious bitch, “and in desperate need of a deep dicking.”

By now nothing that Johanna said or did should come as a shock or surprise to her, but despite that, Katniss’ jaw dropped at the words. It was one thing to think it, to know it in your bones, to live it, but to hear it out of someone else’s mouth, in the light of day, in public, surrounded by several dozen people who might overhear it and have a cheap laugh at her expense or— worse—offer to remedy the situation, was something else altogether.

Cressida gave one of her signature smirks and drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “I hate to say it, Kat, but it’s true. When was the last time you got someone to clear out the ol’ pipes for you? And please don’t say David Marvel because,” she waggled the tip of her index finger in the air, “that doesn’t qualify.”

“Thanks for the reminder, Cres,” Katniss grumbled sarcastically, willing the image of David Marvel’s baby carrot-sized dick from her mind. He had, in fact, been the last guy she’d dated, and after he’d turned out to be an asshole, cheating fuckboy instead of the ‘nice Jewish boy’ she’d been promised by her Aunt Effie, she’d sworn off men altogether. Better to die alone than get screwed over yet again by the micropenis cohort. “I haven’t had time to get back out there, and I’m sure as hell not letting anyone set me up. And—it’s just— look. I’m working doubles, every shift I can get, and my classes this semester are brutal, and then, to top it all off, I haven’t been sleeping because of all the… noise. You guys _know_ that.”

Excuses, all of it. But if she’d expected sympathy or a modicum of kindness out of her friends, she would have been gravely disappointed.

“So what’s keeping you up _more_ at night, would you say— Thor and his magic hammer or the poltergeist of your dead neighbor?” Johanna cackled at her own question, lifting her arm and signalling to the server for another round of drinks.

“Both?” Katniss shrugged, feeling worn down to a nub. “I mean, the sex is almost every night. It’s—he’s— relentless. I think he’s sleeping his way through each of the boroughs, one at a time.”

“Oh, just one at a time? Hmm.” Johanna pretended to look disappointed by this—and a fairly decent approximation of human emotion, Katniss thought.

“Well, let’s hope he makes it over to your burrow next,” Cres quipped, a salacious gleam in her eye.

“Ugh—you guys, knock it off.” Katniss crossed her legs in an effort to banish the thought of a certain blue-eyed demon burrowing his way between them, hating how just the thought of him made her tingle and squirm. “And then,” she went on, “if that weren’t bad enough, if I’m home in the evening and he’s out, then I hear this fucking _knocking_ or something through the wall. It’s like someone’s in there, stomping around, banging shit, I don’t know.” She sighed, running a hand through her _definitely_ greasy hair. Damn, she needed a shower. “I mean, I’m not the type to believe in ghosts, but it sounds like Mags literally rolling in her grave. The first time I heard it I almost called the cops.”

“Aw, pobrecita.” Cres pulled a pout, puffing out her lower lip in mock sympathy. “You get to hear your hot and, by all accounts, _extremely_ willing next door neighbor make sexytime noises in your direction every night? Life is hard indeed.” She leaned her elbows on the table and, steepling her fingers, pretended to be deep in thought. “You know? I should have Vice film an episode on this… this is some hard-hitting news, really revolutionary shit. ‘ _New York City woman suffers insomnia due to local Lothario and ghoul-next-door_.’ There’s some real pathos for you, Kat. I could win an Emmy for that kind of reporting.”

“Yeah, there’d be rioting in the damn streets over that segment,” Johanna laughed.

Katniss was preparing a retort, something excessively witty like ‘fuck off,’ when she saw it—or _him_ , rather—across the room. She hadn’t noticed him at first through the garish blue sea of “NY” apparel and hats, the typographic civil war waging between Yankees and Mets fans, but as the waiter returned with their drinks and she turned to take hers from him, she saw _him_ standing at the bar. Just as she glanced his way, those piercing blue eyes flickered over and met hers. _Holy, holy mother of fuck_. She wasn’t sure who looked away first, but she saw him quickly lean over the bar, flagging down the cute bartender for a drink by flashing her one of his cloyingly sweet smiles (and probably his phone number too).

First he’d invaded her building. Then her hallway. If that weren’t quite enough, he’d trespassed into her bedroom, worming his way into her thoughts and fantasies. But now he was in her _bar_? Was nothing sacred on this green earth?

He made her feel like a cornered animal, chased up a tree or backed up against a wall, and her immediate reaction was to bolt from him. To run out the door, down the street, to haul ass through Manhattan until she reached the Lincoln Tunnel, and then to keep running until she saw the Pacific Ocean stretched out before her. Something about this Mellark guy made her want to Forrest Gump it as far as her legs could take her. The only thing that someone so beautiful and careless could bring her was pain, and she’d had enough of that for a lifetime.

As soon as she turned back around and saw the suspicious expressions on her friends’ faces, she scowled. She’d be damned if she handed them more ammunition to heckle her with by giving them a face to his name. If they saw him—if they knew how attractive her neighbor really was and saw how she panicked just being in the same bar as him—they’d never let her hear the end of it. They’d needle her endlessly until she’d humiliated or wrecked herself by sleeping with him—or by trying to anyway. In a futile effort to ward off questions about the blush she knew had crept onto her face, she leaned her elbows on the table and hunched over her beer, fixing her eyes on the television overhead.

She tried to watch the game. She did, truly. And she succeeded for all of ten minutes.

While Cressida and Johanna prattled and cackled to each other about their jobs, Katniss stared blankly at what should have been an exciting game. It was the second of the series—unfortunately the Mets had won game one—and the Yankees were up by three in the bottom of the eighth. The Mets were at bat with two outs and two strikes, bases loaded. Anything could happen—the game could change with one swing of the bat, one moment of real connection. Maybe the Mets would score a grand slam, and it would be too late for the Yankees to rally for the win. Or maybe the Yankees would hold firm, maybe Chapman could pull it together and pitch one more strike. But all she could think about was the man in the bar behind her and what he was doing. Was he flirting with the bartender? Had he brought a date? Was he combing the bar for prospects? Had he bothered to look her way again?

She chanced a furtive look over her shoulder and spotted him in the back corner at a booth with friends, a couple guys she recognized from the day he’d moved in and a blond girl who appeared to be with the lanky one with the dark hair—Hawthorne, if she remembered correctly. Even from under the bill of his Mets cap, she could see that Rye’s eyes were bored to the screen in front of him, an expression of intensity on his face that she hadn’t seen there before. The couple times he’d tried talking to her, he’d seemed genial and light-hearted, easygoing and laid-back. But that look? It spoke of determination and focus, purpose and a stubborn refusal to accept defeat. She couldn’t help but think it’s how he’d look snapping his hips as he fucked her, pounding into her stroke after stroke until he got what he wanted and felt her seizing him, goading him on to his own orgasm. She wondered if it was what Glimmer the Groaner had seen from her vantage point, when his fingers were knuckles-deep inside of her.

Her clit throbbed at the thought, a rush of arousal pooling between her legs, and she squeezed her thighs together, desperate for any kind of relief she could find. In baseball, a struggling player always got relief. It wasn’t fair that in the game of life—for her, anyway—there was none to be found. She had no team, no other players to help her. It was only her, striking out again and again, exhausted and outplayed.

Just then a roar tore through the bar, a cacophony of hoots and groans as the batter struck out, ending the inning. The sound summoned her back to reality, to the fact that she’d been staring, and she snapped her head back around just as she saw him looking down from the mounted screen to talk to his friends. _That was a close call_. The last thing she needed, other than for his accursed team to win, was for Mr. Homerun Derby to notice her undressing him with her eyes.

She forced herself to rejoin her friends’ conversation, but she had no heart for it. Nothing—not the buzz from the beer, not the soft light of the early evening sun filtering in through the windows, not the thought of the pizza they’d be ordering from their favorite joint in a short while, not even the probability of the Yankees beating the Mets—could distract her from the thought of him. It was thoroughly depressing.

After several minutes of sitting there pensively swishing beer around in her mouth as Cressida relayed some grim statistic about climate change (well, as far as she could tell anyway), Johanna’s voice cut into her reverie, “Hey, is it just me, or does Mets over there seem to have eyes for one of us?”

“Mets? You’ll have to be more specific.” Cres gestured around the bar with one sweep of the hand to prove the point that the description was useless, as it applied to roughly half the people there. Following Jo’s gaze, she nodded subtly, but not nearly subtly enough for Katniss’ liking, in _his_ direction. Katniss didn’t dare turn to look. It was too risky and, besides, something in the pit of her stomach, some admixture of dread and desire, told her she didn’t have to. He’d seen her, and if their past encounters were any indication, he would insist, for some reason, on talking to her. To tease her, probably. Or maybe because he had her earmarked for a rainy day. Cressida gave a little purr of satisfaction as she assessed the booth Jo had pointed out. “You mean tall, dark, and handsome? Yes, please. I’ll have an order of that.”

At that unexpected description, Katniss pivoted in her chair to see who her friends were talking about. It wasn’t Rye that she caught staring at them.

It was his entire fucking booth.

From across the bar, she could see Rye flush pink to the tips of his ears, his fair skin mottling from the embarrassment of being caught pointing her out to his friends. He removed his cap to run a hand through his hair, which he’d left unstyled and messy, and, saying something to his friends, stood abruptly, disappearing in the crowd as he worked his way to the back of the bar toward the restrooms. His friends laughed and resumed talking among themselves, the blond woman’s eyes darting up one last time as she skeptically appraised the three of them.

Katniss whirled back around. Well, fuck. She could only imagine the lewd things he’d been saying about her to them. Isn’t that how guys like him were—isn’t that how _most_ guys were? And now—now it was impossibly awkward in the bar. It felt like all the other patrons had vanished, and it was just their two tables, anchored together at the bottom of a crushing sea, the pressure of the world bearing down on her.

“Katniss,” Jo said suspiciously, seeing how her friend’s hackles had raised at the sight of him, “Do you know Mr. Metropolitans…”

Fuuuuuuckity fuck.

She frowned and considered lying, coming up with some shabby story. Like how he was a handsy patron who’d grabbed her ass while he was eating at the diner last week. Or a fellow student in one of her classes, the jackwad who always set the curve. Or, better yet, he was the future father of her children (the last one would require a level of sarcasm she knew she couldn’t pull off). Taking a deep drag of her beer to polish off the pint, she decided to tell them the truth.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal after all.

“That,” she said with a heavy sigh, “is my next door neighbor, the infamous Rye Mellark.”

Jo’s jaw dropped, and she pointed toward his booth without thinking. Katniss smacked her hand down before any of his friends could see. “ _That_ guy?”

Something in her tone made Katniss bristle. It made no sense, none at all, but Johanna’s incredulity rubbed her the wrong way. “What do you mean ‘ _that_ guy?’”

Cressida laughed and chimed in, “Well, look at him. That guy is… adorable. I could see how he would have no problem getting laid, but…” Her voice trailed off as she searched for the right words, at a loss for once on what to say.

Johanna finished for her, “He’s adorable. _Exactly_. Don’t get me wrong—I’d hit that. Hell, I could see just about everyone here wanting to sleep with him... but he seems like a precious puppy, not an unapologetic manwhore. Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy, Kat? I mean did you see the way he, like, _blushed_ and bolted when we busted him checking you out?”

Katniss squirmed in her chair, hating her traitorous body and what it was doing at the thought of him looking at her in that kind of way. “He wasn’t checking me out.”

“Au contraire, my friend. Mets is into you, and he’s not even remotely smooth about it.”

Katniss scoffed at the thought. “Please. He’s into anything with a vagina. Literally.”

“Oh,” Cres challenged, “and how do you know that?”

Katniss resisted the urge to rip out her hair in frustration. “He's my neighbor. I have ears… and eyes… and a brain… remember?”

Something caught Cressida ’s eyes behind Katniss, and she could tell by their movement that she was watching a certain someone walk across the room. Her heart thundered, hoping against hope that it wasn’t toward her. “So you’re telling me that _he_ ,” she nodded toward the bar where, Katniss could only imagine, Rye was once again standing, “he is the screamer who's been keeping you up every night.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting familiar with the sound of his screams,” Jo quipped. She wetted her bottom lip with her tongue as she looked him up and down. “Yep. Looks like he and I could be real good screaming buddies.”

Cressida thwacked Jo across the arm with her hand but kept her gaze fixed on Rye. “Knock it off. You’ve made your bed. What would Blight say if he heard you talking like that, huh?”

A wicked grin crept onto Jo’s face. “Blight wouldn’t mind a little extra company in bed. Especially not if it was that precious puppy dog.”

If she heard Johanna, Cressida gave no indication of it. “Kat, that guy keeps looking at you like he wants you to have his babies. As in: you might want to kill him, but he sure wants to fuck and marry you.”

Katniss tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears and tried not to look harassed, even though she had mentally begun her run across America and was now approximately halfway across the state of Pennsylvania. Breathing. Pumping her arms. Feet pounding the pavement as the Laurel Highlands breezed past her. Nope. She wasn’t trapped in this hellhole bar with the Wicked Witches of the East and West, not at all.

“Oh my god,” Johanna barked out, taking in the sight of Katniss’ tomato-red face. “You want him. Bad.”

“No,” she retorted, swallowing thickly and reaching for her empty glass to down the dregs because, suddenly, her mouth had gone drier than a Mormon wedding. “I don’t want him any more than I want herpes.”

“Bullshit. You totally want to bone him,” Cres agreed, smiling broadly. “Kat, you’ve got to pull the trigger on this. Even if he’s how you think he is—maybe especially if he’s like that—then don’t you think you could have a good time with him? Clearly he knows what he’s doing, right? And hasn’t it been long enough since you had a good time?”

“I’m having a good time now—or at least I _was_ ,” Katniss grumbled, dodging the question. She covertly looked over her shoulder and watched as Rye chatted with the bartender. She was waifish and perky, with long, flowing brown hair, and with every syllable out of his mouth she smiled and giggled like some ridiculous, fawning toddler making heart eyes at Santa. He hitched his head toward his booth, and the bartender looked toward his friends, a pleased blush staining her face.

It was just as she’d thought, then. He was inviting her to come sit with him, to have a drink, and then to—

Katniss started running through what nickname she ought to give his next conquest. With her innocent eyes the size of saucers, her freckle-smattered cheeks, and her head of thick, wavy hair, she settled on Little Orphan Annie. She hated Annie, deciding right then that she was the worst of them so far because she looked so much like someone she could have been friends with.

“I think I’ve had enough.” Katniss stood up on wobbly legs, opening her pocketbook to toss a twenty on the table. “Close the tab and I’ll meet you outside. I’m gonna grab some fresh air.”

As she walked out the door, she chanced one final look back at him. Rye had walked away from the bar, a pint of beer clutched in each of his hands. But he hadn’t been walking toward his booth—he’d been walking to where she had been sitting only a few seconds ago. When he saw Jo and Cressida handing their money to the waiter, he froze in place, rooted in the middle of the room. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he looked disappointed.

But she did know better. And she knew that by tonight he would have long since gotten over it.

She had been right, of course.

After dinner, as soon as she unlocked her front door and stepped into her apartment with her friends, she could hear the banging of his headboard against the wall.

“Well, you weren’t exaggerating,” Cres laughed, walking into the bedroom and flopping on Katniss’ bed to claim a seat next to the action.

Jo followed, leaning her head out the open window and craning her neck toward his apartment to try to catch a glimpse. “Damn, can’t see anything,” she groused before nudging Cressida over to make room for her on the bed.

Katniss sank onto her couch, head in her hands, and blinked back the tears that were pooling in her eyes. In the other room Cressida and Johanna cackled like a laugh track, sounding as soulless and hollow as the love Rye Mellark made. Every laugh, every sound she heard, brought her lower and lower.

It wasn’t funny, any of it. This was her life. It was a goddamn American tragedy.

When she closed her eyes, she could see them, Annie’s soft brown hair hanging down over her shoulders, the ends tickling the skin of his chest as she rode him, grinding her clit against his pelvis as he thrust his hips upward to bury himself deep inside of her. He’d kiss her gently but fuck her hard because girls like her were tough enough to handle reckless hookups but fragile enough to still need some illusion of care.

She may have been crying into her palms, or maybe she’d simply fallen asleep for a moment, but when she lifted her head with a start at the touch of someone’s hand on her shoulder, it was through bleary, wet eyes.

“C’mon,” Cressida said softly. “Why don’t you come stay the night at my place? I’ve gotta go into the studio in the morning to work on some editing, but I’ll be quiet when I leave, and I’ve got a futon with your name all over it. Mi casa es su casa and all that, ‘kay?”

She didn’t have to answer because the woman on the other side of the wall did it for her.

“Yes yes, oh god yes. Thank _fuck_ for that. Yessssss.”

 

***************************

 

Last night there had been no shrieking. No shrieking woman in the throes of an orgasm. No shrieking of tires. No shrieking of a mother reaching for her dead child as her other daughter lay whimpering and broken on the ground.

It was a wonder what a full night’s rest could do.

Katniss braided her freshly-showered hair while it was still wet and slipped into some clean clothes she’d borrowed from Cressida. They weren’t her usual style, to say the least—some sort of mom jeans cut off into booty shorts and paired with a loose, flowy batik print tank. She looked like she reeked of patchouli and ennui, like any number of the tedious Boho chic hipsters aimlessly floating along the streets of Williamsburg, sipping on overpriced mimosas or shopping at overpriced thrift stores, wearing overpriced, thirty-year-old clothing.

But it was a gorgeous Sunday morning, and she didn’t need to be at work until four, so she decided to people watch and poke around the neighborhood to gawk at whatever gentrification had taken place since the last time she’d visited this neck of the woods.

Like New York itself, the neighborhood was a mishmash of old and new. It was sleek condos standing next to hulking brick walk ups and tiny single family homes the size and condition of garden sheds. It was old bicycle repair shops and family delis passed down through the generations, men with peyots standing behind counters, speaking Yiddish to old women wearing babushkas. It was food truck taquerías and trendy-looking record stores staffed by workers flaunting as much ink as they did skin. New York was the act of assimilation itself, discrete parts coming together, blending to form something new and distinct in all its hodgepodge glory. It was perennial and evergreen, a city growing upon the ashes of the dead, a mutt of everyone and everything that had come before.

It wasn’t long before her stomach issued a formal complaint, grumbling loudly as it digested itself. She noticed a Starbucks down the block and, directly across from it, a bakery with green awnings that hadn’t been there a few months ago.

The choice was obvious: _fuck Starbucks_.

That seemed to be the sentiment of a large number of locals— the line of patrons was so long it stretched outside the door and a quarter of the way down the block. Katniss got in the queue, pulling out her phone to wile away the time, and checked the score of the third game. The Mets were already up three to zip in the top of the second. That was less than ideal, but not irreparable. She shuffled along distractedly with everyone else, like a horde of zombies on their way to a brains buffet. No one seemed to notice—or care—that the art of making conversation was a relic of a bygone age, rendered useless by the far more compelling digital world everyone held in their own hands.

Once she made her way into the crowded bakery, her attention shifted from the screen on her phone to the one mounted on the wall that was showing the game. It wasn’t until the Yankees struck out and the network cut to commercials that she hazarded a look around the bakery itself. The TV was glaringly out of place and must have been, she thought, some concession to masculinity. The bakery was small, essentially a lobby that could fit a couple dozen or so people, but the decor was rustically elegant, with gleaming walnut floors offset by whitewashed pine wainscoting on the walls. Edison bulbs in hand-blown glass pendant shades hung over a traditional glass counter stocked with a mouth-watering array of baked goods and pastries. Behind the counter was a vintage chalkboard listing out the bakery’s menu and, beneath that, a wall lined with baskets of freshly baked loaves of bread and donuts and bagels. And in front of it all, working the counter, was—

_Him_.

It wasn’t possible. The odds of it must have been astronomical.

But there he was, plain as day, wearing a green polo shirt the same exact shade as the awnings hanging over the storefront, “Mellark’s Bakery” embroidered in a tidy retro font on the breast of his shirt. If she’d been asked ten seconds prior what her favorite color was, she might have said that shade of hunter green. Now it only reminded her of him and of how he looked wearing it. Which was, frankly, magnificent.

Green was as good as dead to her.

He made it so easy for her to hate him. She hated that, in this place stocked with sweets and carbs, he was the most delicious thing she saw. She hated the tousled blond waves on his head, the five o’clock shadow lining his square jaw (he must not have had time to shave this morning, what, with the late night he’d had), and the fine, golden hairs covering his forearms. She hated how a man’s fucking _body hair_ could make her feel hungrier than she had ever remember being. And she hated how, in a city of this size, filled with people and places, nook and crannies to lose yourself in, she kept finding him like they were some sad parody of star-crossed lovers.

He didn’t notice her at first because he was busy helping customers, taking their orders, filling paper bags with croissants and scones and bagels by the dozen. She considered leaving before he looked up, but the lobby of the bakery was jammed with customers, and she was worried she’d create a scene trying to escape him. No, she couldn’t have him knowing she was weak when it came to him.

She anxiously waited for him to look her way as the customers in front of her disappeared one by one, her heart beating so hard and fast it felt like it was lodged in her throat. Trying to keep herself from panicking, she kept her eyes fixed on the baseball game. When the batter for the Mets hit a double, driving in the runner on third, a whoop from behind the counter caught her attention. It didn’t sound a thing like Rye’s voice, and she fancied herself something of an expert on that, having heard him make every possible sound, human or otherwise, a man could make.

Craning her neck, she spotted a wiry boy seated on a stool behind the counter. He couldn’t have been older than seven or eight, a little Hispanic boy decked out head-to-toe in Mets apparel, including the cap on his head that was several sizes too large for him. His eyes were glued to the television as he watched the replay, his fists punching the air in triumph.

“Yes! Did you _see_ that?” he squealed with a lisp, his tongue excitedly playing with the massive gap in his front teeth as he pointed to the television.

“Oh man, I missed it,” Rye chuckled, handing a bag to to the couple at the counter, thanking them before continuing, “I’m counting on you, buddy, for the play-by-play while we’re busy, okay?”

“Okay!” The boy wiggled on the stool, perching precariously close to the edge as he tried to relay what had just happened in the game. “Well—it was a fastball, I think, and Cabrera hit a double, and then we scored a run!” He hooted again like it had just happened.

“Think we’re gonna win this one?”

“I do.” The boy nodded solemnly like he’d just taken wedding vows before adding, as if his conviction had been called into question, “Totally.”

Rye smiled to himself as he looked down, counting change out for a customer, and the expression was so affectionate and fond it stole her breath straight from her lungs. She didn’t know what to think about this—she’d known from his mail that he volunteered as a Big Brother, and she supposed that perhaps the little boy behind the counter was the child he’d been paired with. But she hadn’t expected him to be such a natural, so comfortable and at ease, like he genuinely enjoyed the boy’s company and wasn’t in any way obligated to spend time with him. The same could be said for the customers he helped, one after another. There was nothing slimy or seedy about him, nothing that smacked of duty or being “on the clock.” He wasn’t checking out the female patrons, most of whom were obnoxiously adorable. In fact, if anyone was doing the checking out, it was the customers, several of whom Katniss caught scoping out the golden god’s ass (it really didn’t quit). Begrudgingly, she had to acknowledge that there was nothing about this man to suggest he had an almost pathological need to singlehandedly combine “sex” with “the city.” He seemed wholesome and— _normal_.

She fought against the painful awareness that a guy like _this_ —not the sleekly dressed, drunken, suave man he turned into at night—but _this_ —she’d catapult into bed with. More than that, though, she’d willingly line up alongside any of these women for a chance to really be with him. If only he could always be this sort of man.

And if only people could sprout wings and fly.

No sooner did she think that he was capable, at least sometimes, of being a decent sort of man than the customer in front of her shifted to the side, clearing the line of sight between them. Rye looked up and finally saw her, his eyes widening and then immediately falling to her very bare legs.

Her shorts were no better than bikini bottoms, and the way his eyes raked over her bare skin made her feel naked and exposed. She should have worn pants, something other than glorified underwear. She should have shaved her legs. Or worn those fringed gladiator— _no_. She admonished herself for thinking any of those thoughts. What she should have done was just go to Starbucks and said to hell with supporting small businesses.

Because the way he was looking at her was not like she was something cute, not like it had been in the apartment lobby that one day. And, despite what Cressida might have said last night, it wasn’t like he’d pegged her as the future mother of his children either. There was nothing chaste or reverent in his gaze—it was like he wanted to lay his hands on every last inch of her while he consumed her. There was no mistaking it, no matter how she might try to convince herself otherwise. He was devouring her—openly, unequivocally wanting her, however little sense it made.

He clawed at the back of his neck and exhaled forcefully, ripping his eyes away from her and greeting the next customer in line with a crooked smile. Katniss was tempted to watch the game to calm herself back down, but after the brazen way he’d just undressed her with his eyes, she decided to scowl at him instead to show him how unimpressed she was with him (she reminded herself of this on a constant loop: “you’re unimpressed, terribly unimpressed”). She watched his lips moving, the way his tongue darted out to wet them as he spoke to the customer in front of her, but she couldn’t hear him over the pulse thundering in her ears.

Clenching her fists at her side, she dug her fingernails into her palms to the point of pain, willing herself not to pass out, not to scream, not to run away. She stood firm until it was her turn, and then, with a courage she didn’t know she had, she stepped up to the counter to face him.

“Hey.” He smiled at her, having the good sense to look ashamed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognize you at first because you were—and then—god, and you look—” He clawed at his neck again, an obvious tell that he was uncomfortable. Good. She scowled harder, despite the perverse pleasure she was getting from making him squirm.

“That’s fine,” she said looking over his shoulder at the baskets of bread behind him, trying not to act unnerved. She couldn’t handle hearing him tell her how he thought she looked. She could barely think about it without her knees giving out.

“So—ah—what brings you to this side of town?” He leaned his elbows on the counter, knitting his fingers together. He must have had an insane amount of coffee today because it seemed like his hands were tremoring. At this distance she could see every faded freckle that spanned the bridge of his nose and a small scar on his chin. She peeled her eyes away and looked at the pastries in the cabinet instead, staring at apple strudels and wondering where Rye Mellark got that scar. Probably from trying to sling a stilettoed foot over his shoulder.

“Last night I stayed over at—” she paused, considering how much to tell him, and decided to be as vague as possible. Better he know as little about her as could be helped. “I stayed at a friend’s.” She thought she could tell him this much; maybe he’d get the hint that she’d taken to sleeping over other people’s apartments to escape his fuckfests.

“Oh.” He stood back up and wiped his hands on the front of his jeans, his smile faltering a shade. “Is your—uh—friend here, too?” He looked around quickly, scanning the lobby.

“No. She had to work.”

He smiled broadly at that. “That—that’s too bad,” he said, his expression completely incongruous to his words.

“Yeah, I guess.” Katniss looked at him longwise while pretending to peruse the selection of cheesecakes in the cabinet, wondering why he should sound so relieved that Cressida was working.

“Well, I’m glad you found your way here.” He wiped his palms on his jeans again. “What can I do you for?” He winced at the question and looked down to the floor, clearing his throat.

Katniss blushed—more at his reaction than to the unfortunate phrasing of his question. She pushed the image of swiveling hips, swirling tongues, and revolving fingers out of her mind as quickly as she could. “I’ll just take a poppy seed bagel. Toasted, with cream cheese and lox.”

“That’s it?” He looked up at her in disappointment.

She huffed out a laugh. It wasn’t like the place was hurting for business or anything, so she didn’t see why he should care she that she wasn’t buying more—

“What I meant,” he clarified, as if he could read her thoughts, “is that we have the best bagels in the city… You're going to want more than one.”

Katniss arched a brow. “The best? That’s quite a claim.”

Rye laughed, and just like that she thought she could see some of the swagger he showed when bringing home a woman. “Well, it’s true.” He grabbed a poppy seed bagel from its basket and rested it on the work counter, beginning to prep it. After a couple moments he elaborated, “The trick is that our dough is hand rolled. And after it’s proofed and formed, we boil the bagels before baking them in a revolving shelf oven on wooden slabs.” He grabbed the bagel from the toaster and lathered a thick layer of cream cheese on both halves, smirking as he added, “We’ve got one or two other tricks up our sleeves.” He looked over at the young boy on the stool, whose eyes were riveted to the game. “Don’t we Jopa?”

The little boy beamed at Rye, all adulation and worship, “Yep, that's right! We have all the secret recipes too.”

Rye chuckled, finishing his prep of the bagel, his deft fingers wrapping it carefully in paper for Katniss. He dropped it into a bag branded with the bakery’s logo and looked up at her, his eyes sparkling. “This,” he nodded to the bag, “is a _real_ New York City bagel. The best you’ll ever have.”

Katniss narrowed her eyes in response to the boast. She’d only lived here all her life, and he was, after all, just some punk from Jersey. “I’ll be the judge of that.” She reached for the bag, but he stepped back, holding it at bay.

“Nope,” he grinned. “Juan Pablo is the expert. And Jopa only tells the truth. Isn’t that right, bud?”

Jopa didn’t look away from the game this time, opting to shoot a “thumbs up” in Rye’s direction.

“Tough crowd,” he grumbled playfully. Turning, he grabbed a couple bagels from a basket on the wall and dropped them into the bag. “Here.” He held it out to her, “I threw in a couple asiago cheese bagels. They’re our speciality of the house. You’re gonna love them.”

“But—” Katniss protested, gearing up to fight with him. Just as she began to argue, Jopa let out a loud hoot. Rye’s eyes darted over to the television, a megawatt smile lighting up his face at what he saw on the replay. Sonuvabitch. There was no doubting what that meant. When Katniss looked at the television, it was as bad as she thought: the Mets had just scored another two runs, bringing the score to five to zip, still in the second inning.

“Yeah, buddy!” he cheered, stretching his hand out to Jopa for a high five. The kid smacked his small palm against Rye’s, biting his lower lip in concentration from the effort it took to line their hands up perfectly. Katniss let out an involuntary groan. It was bad enough having to see the Yankees get massacred, but to have to deal with Rye’s gloating while she watched? It was akin to torture. There were limits to what a human could endure.

Hearing her groan, Rye whirled his head around and laughed, “Nooooo, you’re a Yankees fan?!” He clutched at his chest in mock distress. “So _that’s_ why you hate me?”

Katniss blinked in shock, unaware that he knew she disliked him—and by how much.

Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be serious. Or fazed. “Guess no one’s perfect,” he quipped. Looking at the long line behind her, he nodded toward the bag. “Anyway, I insist. You gotta try the cheese bagels. And then, when you love them, come by and get some more, okay? Or I could—um—bring them to you. I sort of have an ‘in’ with the owner.”

Katniss grumbled under her breath about being forced to buy more food than she wanted, but she reached into her purse to retrieve her wallet. When she slid a ten dollar bill onto the counter, Rye pushed it, along with the bag, back toward her. “It’s on the house. Please.”

She frowned, not wanting to owe him a red cent. No telling what favors a guy like him might call in on his debts. “No, I can pay.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I’m sure you can. That’s not why I’m giving them to you.” He looked at her intently, a determined set to his jaw. She couldn't help but notice that his eyes were the exact color of blue cotton candy. Even with Jopa wearing his Mets cap, they were still bluer than she knew eyes could be. He crossed his arms against his chest, refusing to touch her money.

Fuck, he was stubborn.

No wonder he always seemed to get his way with women. But not with her, he wouldn’t. She’d rather he gave her the bagels out of charity than what he was really after. “Let me just pay for them, alright?” she sighed in exasperation.

He narrowed his eyes, some thought coming to him. “How’s about this? If the Yankees win, I’ll let you pay me.”

A warning bell went _ding ding ding_ in her brain. Because no way would it be as easy as that. “And if they lose?”

“ _When_ they lose, you mean.”

She rolled her eyes. He really was insufferable. “Okay. Then what?”

He shrugged, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Then you let me take you out on a date.”

The words were shocking and entirely expected, all at the same time. She’d been waiting for the pick up line, the come-on. That’s what he did, it’s who he was. But she didn’t expect him to say it like that or to look like that—almost nervous—as he asked her. And she’d had no idea how the words would sound coming out of his mouth—how sweet they would look on his lips, how savory they would feel curling their way into her body through the shell of her ear and down, down, down along her spine to places long neglected.

It had been so long since a man had asked her out on a date and now, after all this time, that it should be him… it elated her, and then, when she remembered how little it meant—nothing at all—she grew angry at herself for having cared, if only for a moment. There was no such thing as ‘out of your league’ when your opponent would play anyone.

“No deal.” She swiped the bag and left the ten dollar bill on the counter, turning to walk away.

His face fell at the abruptness of her rejection, and he didn’t even try to hide it. He must not be used to women turning him down, she thought. Or maybe that was part of his playbook—to guilt reluctant women into accepting a date with him.

All the same, whether it was a ploy or not, and regardless of the fact that in five minutes he’d move onto hitting on the next girl, she felt a pang of guilt. Could she walk out on him two days in a row, leaving him with that face? To soften the blow, she added over her shoulder, “Because the Yankees aren’t going to lose.”

He grinned, and it was infectious. It was as welcome as the bubonic plague, as certain to lead to her doom, but when Rye smiled, she smiled back.

Turning, she clutched the bag to her chest and walked out the door. As she stepped over the threshold, she heard Jopa’s high, clear voice carry over the din of customers, “Was that sweetheart?”

She forced herself to walk out the door despite the records scratching and wheels squealing in her brain. There was only one person in this world who called her “sweetheart,” and he didn’t mean it sincerely. She was no one’s sweetheart, except Haymitch the Hobo’s.

Which led her to wonder if Rye had asked Haymitch about her—and why. And why would he tell a young child about her when she was just another mountain he wanted to climb? What kind of positive influence was that? It made no sense— _he_ made no sense.

Something didn’t add up.

She chanced a look through the glass window of the bakery, considering what all of it meant: his sweetness, his nervousness, the way he seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve to everyone, including her… compared to the man he was in his apartment, seducing random women, luring them into his bedroom, fucking them, spanking them, pulling their hair as he whispered filthy things and empty endearments to them before sending them on their way, walking behind them in the hall like he didn’t know them at all, much less biblically.

She was still considering these contradictions when the door to the back kitchen swung open and a broad-shouldered man walked through, carrying a tray laden with bagels. He was the same height and general build as Rye, but a good number of years older—maybe as many as ten. His blond hair was the same shade, but shaven almost down to his scalp. On one of his thick biceps she could see a black tattoo, readily visible, even from this distance: _USMC_.

A Marine.

He looked it too— tough and hardened and serious. In every lineament she could read the shit that man had seen in his life, the things he’d worked for. But even though one man looked tough, the other gentle, it couldn’t be more obvious that they were brothers.

New York was a massive, crowded placed filled with people. There was something like four million women in the whole of the city. But if there was one thing Katniss knew it was that there wasn’t a city in this world large enough to handle two of _them_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With many thanks to my Star Squad for all their help, not only for betaing and pre-reading, but more importantly for their moral support and friendship. Dandelion-sunset, eala-musings, everlylark, iamseemaree, jennagill, and pookieh: you are wonderful, and I'll work to deserve you. 
> 
> All remaining errors are mine.
> 
> For goblet girl… Happy birthday, sweetie! <3
> 
> Thanks for all your support so far with this story. If you've been enjoying it, pour some sugar on me! ;) I'm also on tumblr as papofglencoe. <3c

She had a problem, and his name was Rye Mellark.

The problem was that it was impossible to avoid him. Katniss saw him everywhere she went—or at least she thought she did, and that was worse. He was the guy at Duane Reade who kept his arm slung around his girlfriend’s shoulder at the checkout, playfully nipping her earlobe to distract her as she foraged in her purse for her wallet. He was in her accounting class, the shaggy, blond-haired guy who sat in the front row with a mechanical pencil that he never used tucked behind his ear. He was the man who held his daughter at the Dyckman Street station, a pint-sized girl plastered to his broad chest, her spindly legs wound around his torso as her fingers absentmindedly toyed with the collar of his hunter green polo. And every time she saw someone walking down the street in a Mets cap, Katniss lowered her head but looked anyway for the pair of matching blue eyes that should accompany it, hidden beneath the shadow of the bill.

He wasn’t just in her apartment building anymore—or her bedroom, or her bar. He had invaded every corner of her world.

It was paranoia, surely, that kept her on constant alert against him. She hadn’t agreed to the terms of his bet, but he’d won it all the same. The Mets handily won the third and final game of the Subway Series and, with it, the series itself, 2-1. And she had every reason to believe that he was the sort of man who collected on his bets.

Because the worst of it—worse than seeing him go every day and hearing him come every night—was what he left every morning: a small white paper bag emblazoned with the Mellark’s Bakery logo, waiting for her on the ground in front of her apartment.

It had started the morning after the game, and if it hadn’t been for the logo on the bag, she might have been tempted to call the bomb squad. But she knew what she would find in there, and why it had been left for her, and by whom. She’d considered leaving it untouched, a message to him that his advances were unwelcome, but she took it, not wanting to attract pests. It was in the interests of public health, really, that she picked it up. No one wanted rats in the hall.

Reluctantly, she had brought it with her to work and, when she didn’t have time between shifts to eat, she’d opened the bag and devoured, one orgasmic bite at a time, both of the asiago cheese bagels he’d wrapped up in cellophane. She hated to admit it, but they were exactly what a New York City bagel should be—a tough crust on the outside, but soft and chewy on the inside. And the cheese—oh the _cheese_. It was thoroughly melted and as sharp and pungent as the city itself in the sultry dog days of summer.

She had bagels every day for almost week, and they were so delicious she couldn’t care less about the repercussions they might have on her waistline. As she ate them, she moaned, wondering to herself how a pretty rich boy from Jersey could capture the spirit of her city in a baked—well, boiled, _then_ baked—piece of dough.

The catch, of course, to accepting his offerings was that she had to avoid the giver himself. Any future attempts at conversation might lead to her ruin. To her pinned beneath him, arms held above her head by the wrists as she let him carry out every possible sex act imaginable. There was a direct line of causality between the bagels he left her and what he would take from her if she let him, and so she stayed away as best as she could. Better not to see him or thank him. Let him think she was ungrateful.

If she heard footsteps in the hall while she was on her way out the door, she remained inside her apartment, listening until the elevator doors groaned open and then shut. In the evenings, when he brought home his next fuck, she kept her ass planted firmly on the couch, as if he would somehow sense her proximity through the walls and knock on the door and ask her to join them. She walked as briskly as she could whenever she was within a three-block radius of her building, hauling ass like she was trying to steal home base, and she hadn’t checked her mail in a week. Basically, she did everything humanly possible to avoid seeing Rye Mellark. And it still wasn’t enough to rid her of him.

He left her bagels every morning, five days in a row, but then he rested on the Sabbath—or so Katniss consoled herself when she opened her apartment door that morning on her way out to meet Johanna and saw, with disappointment, only the scrubby jute of her welcome mat that ironically read “ _GTFO_.”

She’d never admit it to another soul, but she missed the white bag with the stubbornly cheerful font. And more than that, she missed what was inside the bag. And, _okay_ , maybe she even missed, just a tiny bit, the feeling it gave her knowing that he’d left it there just for her. He couldn’t possibly hand-deliver bagels each morning to every girl he wanted to sleep with, so that had to count for something slightly more than nothing.

It was on that bagel-less Saturday afternoon, while she was out with Jo, that she saw him for real, playing a game of pickup basketball at Inwood Park with a couple Dominican teens she’d seen before around the neighborhood. As luck would have it, after “seeing” him all over the city, she hadn’t recognized him at first. It was his brother that gave him away, the telltale Marine Corps tattoo covering one of his meaty biceps. In the hot afternoon sun, both of the brothers’ fair skin glowed an unhealthy shade of pink, their bare shoulders already burned from exposure.

Everything about Rye though was a little off, a little different from how she remembered. It wasn’t so much a physical difference as it was attitudinal, although he did seem a bit leaner perhaps and taller than the image she had of him in her mind. His laugh was different—careless and arrogant—and he carried himself as if he owned half the city and deserved to, like his last name was Trump. But beyond this, what really threw her off, was the Yankees caps he was wearing over his slicked-back hair. _Must have lost one hell of a bet_ , she reasoned, since he was clearly the betting kind. Because _nobody_ around here switched teams like that overnight without getting their ass kicked for being a traitor.

She hadn’t noticed it on the day he’d moved in, but peeking around the fabric of Rye’s A-shirt was a tattoo spanning the breadth of his shoulders, three stars with Old English script in the center of each one. The middle star was concealed beneath the shirt, save for its top point, but the stars on the left and right were mostly visible. Katniss thought she could discern a “B,” maybe, on the left star, and a “PM,” on the right, but from a safe distance and with Rye in near-constant motion, it was too difficult to say for sure.

He looked fit and healthy, and Katniss allowed herself a moment to admire the way his calf and arm muscles flexed as he went in for a layup. There was no doubt he was attractive—anyone could see that—but even though he was wearing the right team’s hat for once, his demeanor was enough to remind her of why she ought to keep her distance. Out on the court, he was all shit talk and swagger. There was no way around it—every time he struck her as sweet and shy, there was a time like this to match it, when her douchebag radar pinged off the charts, screaming, ‘ _Summer’s Eve_!’ at her.

“Hey, isn’t that your boyfriend?” Jo teased, nudging Katniss in the ribs as she eyed him on the court.

“Ugh—stop saying that. He’s not my boyfriend. _That_ ,” Katniss tipped her chin in his direction just as he smiled and smacked one of the kids across the shoulder for scoring a three-pointer, “will never be my boyfriend. Or fuck buddy, for that matter. Or anything other than my annoying neighbor.”

“Yeah, about that…I still think you’re out of your mind. Or maybe you just don’t have one.” Jo pulled her sunglasses down her nose with her index finger to look at him in the flesh. “He’s got some moves out there, Kat. Didn’t know he had it in him. Bet he’s got some of that in the bedroom too.” Katniss made a move to walk along, not exactly in the mood for Rye to catch her staring at him, but Jo grabbed hold of her arm. “Not so fast, Everdeen. Have you talked to him since D-Day?”

That was what her friends had decided to call last Sunday, in honor of the first date she’d been asked out on since David Marvel’s Lilliputian prick limped its way out of her life.

“No,” Katniss said, her eyes flashing fire at her friend’s hand where it rested. “And I plan to keep it that way.” She tried to tug free, but Jo easily held on and dragged her closer to the court.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Johanna scoffed. “You can’t avoid him forever. And besides, what’s the harm in a little flirting?” She didn’t wait for an answer as she led Katniss over toward him.

Panic welled up in her the closer they got to the chain link fence surrounding the court. “No,” she grunted under her breath, wresting her arm from her friend. “Don’t make me kill you, Jo. Because. I. Fucking. Will.” She’d meant to whisper it. She truly had. But it was possible her words came out as something _slightly_ louder than a whisper because, at that moment, Rye looked over in her direction.

Or _their_ direction, rather.

There was no denying the way he checked her out, his eyes doing a once over from head to toe, lingering for an extra couple seconds on her tits and ass. But then they flitted over to Johanna and went through the same exact motions: _face-tits-tits-ass-ass-legs_. He smirked and turned away, back to playing the game.

She ought to have felt nothing but relief at what was, effectively, a dismissal. She could breathe easier knowing that another offer from him wasn’t likely to be forthcoming. No more awkward attempts at conversation. No more bets, and no more bagels on her doorstep. After only a handful of days, it was clear that he’d already grown bored of chasing after her—and she could hardly blame him when his efforts would be better spent elsewhere, on someone who would fall for his games.

She told herself she was relieved and that the pit in her stomach was from hunger.

Jo looked at her and saw something on her face that was neither relief nor hunger. “C’mon,” she said, her voice a shade softer, almost pitying. “This seems like the perfect afternoon for some responsible day drinking, don’t you think?” Just as she had steered Katniss toward the court, her friend now guided her away.

Katniss shot a final glance over her shoulder to see if Rye noticed her leaving. Although she’d been blown off, the masochist in her—the part of her that always seemed to look for him—had to know. He dribbled the ball, passing it to his teammate behind his back, and then ran down the court toward the net.

If he gave her a second look, she didn’t see it.

***************************

By the time she got back to the apartment building it was already early evening. Day drinking met happy hour and married, producing two ever-so-slightly tipsy girls. Jo had suggested ordering in Chinese and watching Tarantino movies while they sobered up, and, since Katniss didn’t want to be alone with whatever horror show Rye decided to put on for the building tonight, she’d eagerly agreed, even though she was sick to death of Jo’s fascination with the director (how many times could one person watch _Kill Bill_? The answer, it turned out, was: an infinite number).

When the buzzer rang with the delivery downstairs, Jo curled her body deeper into the couch cushions and nudged Katniss with her foot. “That’s you, Black Mamba. Get on it.”

Considering that Katniss had already seen Vernita Green get her ass handed to her half a dozen times in her life, she didn’t bicker. Besides, she could use a couple minutes to herself to think. She hopped off the couch and straightened out her pajamas, a pair of men’s boxers and an oversized baseball tee, and slipped on a pair of flip-flops. “Fine,” she said, “but dinner’s on you. That’s just the price you pay for laziness.”

Without looking, Jo pointed to the hemp satchel that passed as her purse, and Katniss sifted through the mess of receipts in it until she found Jo’s wallet, an old imitation leather bi-fold that looked like it had been pickpocketed off someone’s dead grandpa. “If I’m not back in five, send a search party after me,” she called back over her shoulder as she walked out into the hall.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jo griped, not wanting to be disturbed. “Just go get the damn food. I’m starving.”

As Katniss clicked the door shut behind her and walked down the hall, the silence seeped into her, drawing her into her own thoughts. With her friend’s constant company, and through the fog of her buzz, she hadn’t had the chance to process her feelings about what happened earlier in the day. Now that she had a few moments to herself and was feeling fairly clear-headed, she lost herself in examining what those feelings might be.

Relief. Knowing she’d been nothing more than a fleeting thought to Rye meant she didn’t have to worry about whether he’d wear her down and break her. Crisis averted.

Right?

But no. There was disappointment there, too, she had to admit. He never brought home unattractive women, and the thought that he’d been attracted to _her_ —sure, she might have been one in a vast number, but at least it made her feel like she was someone worth wanting. It had been so long since someone made her feel beautiful, feminine. And he’d done both. It was in the way he’d looked at her—the proof that he found her worth noticing. He’d made her feel desirable, and he had made her feel desire itself. He’d done that so easily.

_Too_ easily. Because, if she was being honest, he’d barely done anything at all. A few conversations and a dozen bagels, and she’d been looking for him everywhere she went. Pathetic. She was pathetic.

And it was this realization that brought her to her principal feeling. More than anything there was something burning in her gut, an uncontained fire, and it could only be from shame. She was ashamed of herself for wanting a guy like that to be interested in her in the first place. Because _goddammit_ he had been interested enough to ask her out and leave her bagels every morning for a week, but then, when he saw her in public—in the presence of his brother—he acted like he’d never seen her before in his life, like she wasn't worth a second glance. Did she really go from “sweetheart,” someone he’d ask a hobo about, to a dismissive smirk in the span of a week? It stung. There was something embarrassing about it, being so publicly passed over after being privately…pursued?

But _had_ he pursued her?

The whole situation was so confusing. And, because she didn’t understand how any of it worked, it pissed her off. She was angry at him for whatever game he was playing, but more than anything, she was angry at herself for letting herself slip, even if only a little. Yes, she had to admit she was mostly angry at herself because she had known, almost from the first second she had laid eyes on him, what sort of man he was.

Katniss was so lost in her thoughts that when the elevator arrived at the fourth floor, she walked straight into the door. Or the door walked into her. No, that wasn’t right either.

It was a wall.

Except, instead of her face crashing into the cold, faux-wood paneling of the elevator, the wall she found herself pressed against was warm and muscled and had a rapidly beating heart that pulsed beneath the palm of her hand. The wall smelled like cinnamon and some fresh herb, something distinct like dill, and it had hands that grabbed onto her arms and gently peeled her off of it.

Off of _him_.

She barely registered the sound of a paper bag hitting the floor because her senses went into overload from his heat, his scent, the feel of him, but beyond all that, from his touch.

She hadn’t even looked up yet, but she knew it was him because wherever his hands touched her it burned, and of all the people in the world, why was it only him—why did it have to be _him_ —who could make her feel like that? She wanted to scream at him because no one should be able to do that to someone, to incinerate them and reduce them to ashes with one touch.

His hands fell to his sides, and she shivered when the air met her skin.

The first thing she saw as she lifted her eyes was a wrinkled, faded black t-shirt stretched across a chest as broad as she had remembered. Maybe it was a trick of perspective or the fact that he wasn’t standing next to the bright green Incredible Mellark, but from where she stood, at this proximity, he seemed stockier and more athletic than he’d looked playing basketball, like he was someone used to doing physical labor instead of only playing at it. On his shirt there was a cracked decal of a smiling, dancing coney dog with arms, holding sparklers like it was the goddamn Fourth of July. The weiner was winking and leering from where it was wedged between two buns. Above the coney the shirt obnoxiously proclaimed: “Hot Dog Party!”

It reminded her of some primitive cave art of a stickman with a boner. Except, for some reason, a man in the modern era, in the middle of New York City, was wearing it, inviting everyone to his hot dog party—presumably in his pants.

So douchey.

“Nice shirt,” she grumbled without thinking, finally looking up to meet his gaze.

She was surprised to see his grin, not because it was there—after all, that seemed to be the expression that came most naturally to him—but because it looked almost bashful.

He was back to wearing that damned Mets cap again, too, and when he removed it and ruffled his wavy hair, several strands stood on end, stiff from dried sweat. “It’s so douchey, right?”

Well, that was yet another surprise, his self-awareness—he was full of them today, it seemed. She tried to hide the pleasure she felt in how his thoughts had mirrored her own, working to keep her face and voice impassive. “Well, you said it.”

“It’s not mine—I just grabbed the first thing I could find off the floor this morning.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, which, now that she thought about it, seemed too pale for someone who she’d seen frying to a crisp in the afternoon sun. “I’ve been working so much, almost nonstop, but I guess I should really make some time to do laundry, huh?”

Katniss rolled her eyes. A likely story. More like _fucking_ nonstop, and there was no way that the girls he brought home with him would think to pack night shirts and toothbrushes before their sleepovers. Unless Mags had been a secret freak and had left that shirt stashed under the floorboards or something, who the fuck else’s would it be? She shot the shirt another disdainful look. “Yeah. You should carve some time out of that busy schedule of yours. And burn _that_ while you’re at it.”

She wasn’t joking, but he laughed anyway, color returning to his face as he smiled. He stooped down and picked up the small paper bag that had fallen to the floor. She’d know that bag anywhere. White. Crisply folded along the top. The black “Mellark’s Bakery” logo inspiring a Pavlovian amount of drool to collect in her mouth. Her fingers itched to snatch the bag from him and run back into her apartment, to say to hell with the Chinese food and to hell with Johanna Mason and to hell with anything that didn’t rhyme with “geez schmagel.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t leave any bagels for you this morning. There was some—uh— miscommunication about the…wait, how did it go again?” He looked away thoughtfully and chuckled as the words he was searching for came back to him. “Oh, yeah,” he paused to make air quotes and lowered his voice an octave in jest, “the ‘allocation of bakery resources proportionate to ownership, and the expectation thereof.’” He laughed, clearly unperturbed, and as he grinned, Katniss noticed the faint dimples on both of his cheeks. They looked like quotation marks on the sides of his mouth, put there to frame his words.

She wrinkled her nose, parsing out the meaning of what he’d said. “So…your brother ate them?”

Rye scratched the side of his nose, still chuckling, and nodded. “In a nutshell.”

Katniss could see that—a big, beefy Marine like his brother looked like he could put away more than his fair share of food. And besides, he was clearly older, so it stood to reason he had invested more in the bakery than Rye had and felt like he was entitled to more of everything it had to offer. The thought passed through her mind that, Marine or not, she could kill him for eating her bagels, service to country be damned.

“That’s the thing about him,” Rye explained. “He sort of does whatever he wants without thinking of who it might...” At a sudden noise down the hall, his words trailed off, and his eyes darted over Katniss’ shoulder, a deep frown line creasing his forehead.

Katniss took a quick glance, unable to resist the urge to see who was capable of earning an expression like that—it looked so foreign on Rye’s face that she pitied the person on its receiving end. She assumed it must be Johanna poking her head in the hallway to bitch about her imminent death by starvation, but instead it was the creepy tenant from 474 walking toward them.

Katniss didn’t know a great deal about him, but what she did know weirded her out. Whereas a guy like Rye brought women home nightly, brazenly and openly, she never saw 474 with another soul, male or female, friend, lover, family or otherwise. Make no mistake about it, she didn’t trust Rye for a second, but she found him infinitely more trustworthy than this other man, with his eyes so piercing and cold they felt like knives being hurtled at her head and with his bizarre facial hair that looked like it had been shaved to resemble some mythical beast being burned alive. He gave her the feeling that he had been the sort of person who had tortured small animals as a child, not because he enjoyed their pain so much as he took pleasure in devising new ways to inflict it.

As he approached them on his way to the elevator, 474 kept his eyes downcast. Unconsciously, Rye angled his body between her and the man walking by, using his body like a shield, his muscular arms crossed against his chest. She had never been closer to breaking for him in that moment, from the way he instinctively moved to protect her without seeking an altercation or incident. It wasn't something he thought about; it was just something he did, someone he was. Protective.

The other man stopped at the elevator, pressing the call button. Thankfully, the elevator was still waiting at their floor, and he stepped on, the doors groaning shut after him. Katniss made no move to join him, and Rye said nothing either.

She looked up at him, already feeling uncomfortably close but wanting to get closer anyway. There was some quality to him that called to her, drawing her toward him like a magnet, so she dug her toes into the soft padding of her sandals to root herself in place. Crossing her arms over her chest, she began to regret that she wasn’t wearing a bra. It was close and humid in the hallway, but her nipples had begun to stiffen into peaks, belligerently poking at the thin white fabric of her shirt, begging to be noticed even though they weren’t much to see.

Rye looked down at her darkly, seeming to consider whether or not to say something. Finally he said, “He’s an odd one, don’t you think?”

Katniss nodded, feeling a little too breathless to answer as she watched him worry his bottom lip with his teeth. She didn’t tell him about the time the super, Boggs, had been called in to inspect 474’s kitchen plumbing and, when he opened the dishwasher, noticed a collection of women’s undergarments of various sizes stuffed inside, or about how Boggs had told her that he’d been fielding complaints for months from female tenants about how their undergarments kept going missing from the communal laundry room. “You could say that,” she said instead. “I tend to avoid the people I have a...feeling about.” _Including you_ , she added silently, remembering that Rye was more dangerous now for having made her feel safe.

She took half a step back and began to move around him. He angled his broad body to make room for her to pass in the narrow hall.

Before she could walk by, he cleared his throat and held out his hand, jiggling the bag he carried as an offering. “I—uh— just finished prepping for a 500-person wedding and brought these extras home. I thought we could—ah—maybe share them if, you know, cupcakesareyourthing.” His last words spilled out of his mouth in one unbroken string, and he clawed at the back of his neck uncomfortably, like picking up girls was something he didn’t do habitually, nightly, pathologically. What a mindfuck this one was.

Because there was no doubt that’s what this was: an attempt to pick her up and seduce her on what must have been an extremely slow Saturday night. ( _How could cupcakes not be someone’s thing_?)

Her answer would have been _no_ even if he hadn’t snubbed her earlier in the day. It would have been a resounding _hell no_ , bellowed out her window to the street for all of New York to bear witness. It would have been a _fuck no_ , even after he pulled the clear plastic container holding two perfectly decorated cupcakes out of the bag for her approval, a small, hopeful smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

The cupcakes looked exquisite, it had to be said, a yellow cake with a creamy white frosting topped by a pale purple flower and hand-spun sugar that sparkled like glass.

“They’re lavender hon-ey,” he offered, the last syllable a sing-song encouraging her to say yes, please say yes, that they would be good and he’d be good too, and that he’d be sweet to her, so sweet, so very sweet, like everything he made, even his love, would be sweet. Like honey.

It made her think about what name he would call her as his fingers tugged the crotch of her panties to the side, what sweet name he would give her as he dragged his dick along the slick heat of her folds, what name he would moan as he pushed inside of her. Maybe she would be honey. Maybe she would be sweetheart. Whatever he chose, it would taste delicious on his tongue.

“Sorry. I’ve got plans,” she said, trying hard not to sound as sorry as she inexplicably felt. She pointed toward the elevator with the hand that was holding Jo’s wallet. “I’ve got to grab my Chinese downstairs—if it’s still there, that is—and then Jo and I are watching Tarantino.” She grimaced, realizing he had no idea who “Jo” was and feeling like she’d offered him way more information than she ought to have.

His gaze traveled from the dead grandpa wallet she carried in her hand to her baggy shirt and boxer shorts, his face falling. “Right. Of course you have plans with—I’m sorry—that was stupid of me. I—ah— don’t know what I was thinking.” He chuckled awkwardly and shifted his weight, dropping the cupcakes back into the bag and crossing his arms again. “Well, it was worth a shot, right?” he said lightly, the smile on his face not quite reaching his eyes.

This guy was giving her whiplash. From ignoring her and checking out her best friend this morning to…this…whatever _this_ was. If she didn’t know better she’d think he was shy, but then she knew exactly who he was. This wasn’t a sincere offer to get to know her, to enjoy a Saturday night on a date with her. No. He’d assumed she didn’t have plans and thought he could work his way into her panties with a cupcake, some leftover confection from someone else’s night of joy, a worthless clump of sugar that had cost him nothing.

He exhausted her. Every night, every time he brought a giggling, squawking, preening woman home and pummeled her to completion. Every time she saw him in the hall or on the street. Every time she closed her eyes and spread her legs and touched herself, thinking about the way his blue eyes would look gazing up at her from the apex of her thighs. Every time she opened her front door and saw the bag waiting for her and thought about how the name “Mellark” would sound rolling off her tongue.

None of this would lead anywhere good.

“I gotta run. Stuff to do, people to see,” she said, her voice flat, her tone final. She walked over to the elevator and pressed the call button, not bothering to look back at him.

“Yeah, I guess I should too. Maybe I’ll head out to the bar. You know—um—because Tarantino movies are loud with all the—ah—screaming.”

She snorted and shot him a look. The guy had a lot of fucking nerve, complaining about a movie she was watching being too loud. “By the way,” she said, her hackles raised, “you don’t have to apologize for not leaving me bagels this morning. In fact, you don’t have to leave them for me anymore. I’d really prefer if you didn’t.”

He took half a step back like she’d just punched him in the chest. A deep frown marred his face. “Oh. Alright.” He nodded, a resolute, decided gesture. “Sure. I don’t want to upset you or—Joe.”

Katniss frowned and shook her head. What the hell did Johanna have to do with anything? “It’s not that. It’s—” Her voice broke off as she considered what to say...it was because she didn’t like owing people debts, and especially not people like him, but he couldn’t know that. “Just don’t. And since you won’t take my money, drop by the diner sometime and I’ll make sure to pay you back with a milkshake and coney dog.” She pointed at his shirt by tipping her chin as the elevator door slid open. “Since you obviously love them so much.”

“I’ll stop, if that’s what you want.” Rye swallowed thickly, the muscles in his throat visibly constricting. His face looked earnest and stricken.

She didn’t think he was talking about bagels, and neither was she.

“I want you to stop. It’s what I want. It’s all I want.” She stepped onto the elevator and tugged at the front of her shirt, hoping he couldn’t spot the lie. Her words said one thing, her body another, and she didn’t know which truth to believe anymore. The elevator took her down, but some part of her, some part that ran wild, unfettered and free, that she couldn’t control, stayed with him.

***************************

Today was her lucky day. She could feel it.

From the minute she woke up after a full night of uninterrupted sleep—ten minutes before the alarm, no less—and spotted Johanna’s hemp satchel at the door, laden with quarters to pilfer for the wash, to the moment she walked into the basement laundry and found both of the rusty, overworked washing machines empty, the odds had been in her favor. True, she had to work the dinner shift tonight, but for once she felt up to it—felt _good_ , in fact—and she’d have a freshly washed uniform to wear too. For a couple hours she wouldn’t reek like chili cheese fries and grease and despair.

Everything was coming up roses.

Until he walked through the door, that was.

She’d been sitting on the dryer with her legs dangling in front, ankles crossed—ostensibly to keep guard over her drying undergarments and uniform, but really because the vibrations of the machine were rocking her world—when he walked in.

She buried her nose deeper into her favorite book, an old, ratty copy of _A Clockwork Orange_ that she’d read a hundred times, and pretended she was reading instead of following his every movement out of the corner of her eye.

He halted at the threshold like he wasn’t sure what to do, whether to move forward or go away, and she huffed in annoyance at the politeness of it, snapping the next page even though she hadn’t finished reading the last one.

Rye cleared his throat and walked into the room, toward the washing machine next to her. Her body hummed and thrummed the closer he got, but she told herself it had nothing to do with him at all, and everything to do with the fact that the dryer—and the dryer alone—was turning her on. She felt heated and shaken—and that was before she looked at him.

He still had his green polo on from the bakery, his face flushed pink from the summer heat. He was carrying a heaping laundry basket under his right arm like it weighed nothing at all, his arm curled comfortably around it, his flexed bicep stretching the sleeve of his shirt. Dropping the basket onto the ground in front of the washer, he placed his Mets cap on the top of the washer lid and peeled his polo off to drop it into the pile of dirty clothes, the hem of his undershirt lifting to expose the taut skin of his abdomen. For one brief, delicious second she caught a glimpse of the fine, golden hairs that lightly trailed down, disappearing beneath the waistline of his pants.

_So that’s what they get to see_.

Katniss ripped her eyes away as his flitted over to her. He nodded in greeting as he put his cap back on, curving the well-worn bill with one of his broad hands, and gave her a wan smile. “Another day in the mines, huh? We gotta stop meeting like this.”

She cleared her throat and snapped her book shut, placing it next to her on the dryer. “Well, that would be hard to manage since we both live here.” A frayed thread on her shorts suddenly caught her attention, and she twisted it between her fingers over and over, worrying it until it was long enough for her to wind around her index finger.

He sighed at her response and dumped all his clothes into the washer, tearing open a packet of soap and plunking a couple quarters into the machine to start the load. Leaving the empty basket in front of the machine, he walked across the room to the folding chair propped against the wall and sank onto it heavily.

She resisted the urge to look at her phone and picked up her book instead, pretending not to watch him as he rested his head against the concrete wall, his eyes closed and forehead furrowed.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for what felt like hours, Katniss pretending to read, Rye pretending to sleep, and both doing a piss-poor job of it. She fidgeted on her perch, feeling odd for sitting on the hot, clanging metal of the dryer and remorseful that she hadn’t explained to him the night before about the building’s resident panty raider. And even from across the room, she could see Rye’s pulse throbbing in his neck, the way his jaw rolled from tension.

“Can I ask you a question?” His voice carried over the rumbling of the machines, sounding as tumbled and shaken as the laundry itself.

Forcing herself to exhale, she counted to five before answering to try to calm her hammering heart. It skipped and leapt and stuttered along, missing beats altogether. He was relentless. “You just did.”

He huffed out a humorless laugh. It sounded bitter, and as it carried through the air, Katniss thought it tasted that way, too. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

She sighed, running her fingers along the inner spine of the book, thinking about how this was its own form of torture. She imagined that the thundering of her pulse, the whooshing of the washer, the tisking of the dryer, and the tapping of Rye’s foot were composing a symphony, one made out of tension and unspoken accusations and the abject desire to touch, to taste, to know.

“Why do hate me?”

“I don’t hate you,” she said, hoping it was enough to end the conversation before it could begin. There was too much she couldn’t say to him. How the person she really hated was herself, for wanting him.

His face was red as he pressed on, his skin blotchy and mottled like Jackson Pollock had made an art project out of him. “I don’t believe that…the way you look at me, or _won’t_... Have I done something to you?”

The rawness in his voice and how he’d phrased the question made her think of all the women he’d done things to, all the bare acts and feral deeds, and how she wished she’d been one of them, even knowing it was wrong to want that. She blushed and looked away, unwilling to meet the blue eyes she could feel fixed on her.

“I mean,” he clarified, when she didn’t answer immediately, “generally…people like me. Or at least they tolerate me. But you—you can’t get away from me fast enough. Have I done something to offend you? I’m sorry if I have—I just—I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out what it might have been.”

She could tell him yes. She could be specific, provide him an itemized list of all his offenses and of what, exactly, he had cost her. Money: for the white noise machine (useless), noise canceling earphones, headache medicine from having to wear the cumbersome noise canceling earphones, taxi fares from all the missed trains, bottles after bottles of wine to drown out her despair, a vibrator that—no questions, please—her friends had bought for her, dubbing it “Gosling.” And then there was the unquantifiable offenses, which were so much worse. The countless hours of lost sleep, the hit to her GPA, the tears—of shame, loneliness, self-loathing, and longing. And that’s just what he’d done to _her_ —it didn’t touch upon what he’d done to all of _them_. She blushed furiously at the thought. But she couldn’t say any of this to him.

Glancing down at her book, she exhaled her answer, willing him to shut up with one exasperated syllable. “No.”

Rye jammed his hands into his pants pockets, his thumbs hooked over the sides, tapping out a rhythm. “No, I haven’t done anything to offend you?” He looked disbelieving, his eyebrows knitted together, his eyes as dark as the sky at dusk.

He took a deep breath as if to argue, and that was no good at all, so she added—more forcefully this time—hoping to shut him up, “I don’t hate you. _Really_. I just want to be left alone.”

“Well,” he said, a rueful smile hitching up the corner of his mouth, “that’s the thing. We’re neighbors, and if you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of living in close quarters. So I’m not saying we need to be best friends or on each other’s speed dial or anything, but I don’t see the harm in being friendly, do you?”

She bit the inside of her cheek and looked toward the basement window, a small, rectangular pane of glass near the ceiling that was covered in thick, iron bars. A dungeon. She was trapped in an actual dungeon with him, her work uniform and underwear tumbling over and over in a never-ending cycle as he asked her to air her dirty laundry. “Do people still have that?” she wondered aloud.

“Have what?”

When she glanced over at him, his frown had been replaced by something else—something that looked a little like hope. It worried her, the way he was looking at her, like he knew he’d found the chink in her armor. She peeled her tongue off the roof of her mouth to speak. “Speed dial—is that something people still have?”

He laughed, the soft, husky sound of his voice heating her, reaching her where she was afraid to be touched. This was the harm in being friendly. Already—instantly—he was rooting his way inside of her.

“Now that you mention it, I have no idea.” He took off his hat, hanging the cap on his knee, and scratched the top of his head, mussing his hair. She watched his fingers rake through his blond waves, and it drove her mad enough to want to stalk over to him and comb his hair back down for him with her own two hands. He was making such a spectacular mess of it, and he didn’t care.

He’d do the same to her, and she’d let him.

After a moment of silence Rye nodded toward her book and scratched at his jaw. “So—ah— have you read that before?”

She considered how to answer and decided to play it cool. Best not to give him any ammunition. “Yeah…a couple times.” She shrugged nonchalantly but picked up the book, holding it on her lap like a precious relic of a lost civilization. There was something she should ask him, she knew it, but what it was had slipped her mind, and instead she was thinking about how he’d licked his lips, and his bottom lip looked so soft and wet and—

“I read it too, back in high school. Sort of a fucked up thing to have kids read, don’t you think?”

His words pulled her out of her trance, and Katniss scowled, feeling like she ought to defend the book—and herself for loving it—and maybe the American educational system while she was at it. Seeing her expression, Rye held up his hands in mock protest and laughed. “No, not that face again. Anything but that face. I didn’t mean it like that. You’re a fiery one, huh?” He sounded pleased by the observation, not put off like most people were. “It was just—a tough read for me. Not because of the slang, or whatever. It was...pretty violent, and then all the torture stuff…” His voice trailed off, his smile fading slightly. “But I liked it.”

The tepidness of his words made her surly. _Liked_ it. No wonder the women he brought home were so vapid. She bet he couldn’t identify something great, something brilliant, out of a lineup of one. Impatiently, she pulled at the legs of her shorts, willing them to cover more of her skin. Maybe she imagined it, but she thought he bit back a smirk as she did it, which made her even surlier. “Well, I _loved_ it. It’s one of my favorites.”

“Fair enough.” He grinned and put his cap on backwards. The way it sat on his head forced the ends of his hair down over the tips of his ears, emphasizing how desperately he needed a haircut. He wiped his palms on the fabric of his jeans, down the length of this muscular thighs. “See...this isn’t so painful, is it?” He exhaled loudly, the effort betraying the sentiment of his words. “So what do you say…think we can be droogs?”

He was already using what he knew against her.

_Friends_. He wanted to be friends. It sounded like a terrible idea, but she supposed it was preferable to him trying to make her his devotchka—that is, if she could trust him to stick to ‘just friends’ and keep his hands (those capable, strong, thick-fingered hands) to himself.

Katniss tried to stave him off one last time. “I’m no good at droogs.”

“Well,” he said, his eyes sparkling in merriment, “here’s how this droog thing works. We tell each other the deep stuff.”

She arched an eyebrow. “The deep stuff?”

Like: _I haven’t been fucked in over two years, or kissed in even longer. My sister’s dead, and it should have been me. When I think of my future all I see is darkness, like an abandoned highway at night, stretching out to nowhere, and sometimes I don’t see the point of going on when every day is exactly the same. I’m terrified of how easily I could love you if you’d let me. And when I came last night, I moaned your name into my pillow, imagining that it was your body next to mine_.

No, she didn’t think he was quite ready for the fucking “deep stuff.”

He smiled, oblivious to her thoughts. “Yeah. For example, I know you have terrible taste in baseball teams and bagels—since you don’t want to eat mine anymore. You work as a singing waitress to put yourself through school, which I know can’t be easy. Hmm…what else?” He looked off in the distance for a moment, a fond look making its way onto his face, his fingers tapping against his lips. “Oh yeah, hobos seem to love you—or one does, anyway. You play the same record all the time—I don’t know what that crap is, but now that I’ve said it, I really hope it’s not you—you either have a taste for violent entertainment or you let Joe pick out the movies you guys watch, and you don’t cook your dinner so much as you scorch it. And I mean nightly, scorched-earth-policy-type stuff.”

She looked at him incredulously. His eyes sparkled playfully, and his face was flushed a bright, cherry pink. Apparently his eye idea of friendship meant teasing the shit out of her.

Well, two could play that game.

Hopping off the dryer, she leaned against it, her elbows resting against the metal. From this position, she knew she looked like mostly leg in her tiny shorts. She didn’t know what had gotten into her—this wasn’t like her at all—but the opportunity to tease him was too good to pass up. Her pulse raced victoriously at the way his eyes widened and dropped down, down, tracing the lean lines of her body.

“Okay,” she said, “here’s what I know about you. I know you’re from New Jersey, god help you. You let your big brother steal your food, which for some reason you seem to think is cute. You don’t ever sleep, mostly because—well,” she broke off, finding that she couldn’t quite say the words, after all, “but when you go to bed you always sleep with the windows open. Your sad heart bleeds for the Mets—I think you were born in that damn hat, your poor mother—and,” she swallowed thickly, going in for the kill, “you’ve got a revolving door on your apartment.”

He blew air out of his mouth noisily and leaned his head against the wall. “Don’t I know it,” he said, rubbing tiredly at the corners of his eyes.

She was surprised at how freely he admitted it, and with so much resignation in his tone. She’d expected a smirk, some swagger, a bit of sparkle, a whiff of the stinking sex cloud he lived on.

“Alright,” he continued, “so we somehow know all that about each other, but don’t you think it’s weird we don’t even know each other’s names—unless, of course, your name actually is ‘sweetheart,’ in which case please pass along my compliments to your parents on their excellent choice.”

“Wait,” she scoffed, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “You actually think I don’t know your name?” She scowled at him, suddenly furious at his naivete. “Are you kidding me?”

He frowned and scratched his ear, her certainty and disdain clearly throwing him off. “Well, I mean…did Haymitch tell you?”

She laughed mirthlessly, turning around to check on the time left on the dryer. Seven minutes. Seven minutes in hell. “No, Haymitch didn’t tell me,” she said, mocking his tone. “He didn’t have to. I’ve heard it screamed and moaned and bellowed every possible way almost since the day you moved in. ‘ _Yes, Rye! Please, Rye! Right there, Rye! OhmyGawwwwwd, Rye!_ ’ What I want to know,” she said, finally turning back around to look at him as she leveled her accusation, “is who in our building _hasn’t_ heard about the notorious Rye Fucking Mellark?”

She didn’t know what she expected from him or what she had hoped to see when she looked at him. She thought he’d look smug, and she wanted him to look sorry.

But he looked aghast. And more than a little confused. Slowly, his face drained of color, and his gorgeous, stupid jaw fell gorgeously, stupidly open. “Wait, what? How—why would you…” He clawed at his neck, smoke practically billowing from his ears as he put all the pieces together. “The open window,” he muttered, the realization dawning across his face that she’d heard it all, every last thing.

“Like you said, we’re living in close quarters. You think I don’t know what kind of guy you are? Please. I’ve seen the girls you bring home. And how you don’t even bother talking to them the next morning.”

He looked shocked, then had the balls to laugh. She couldn’t understand why this was such surprising news to him, and she sure as fuck didn’t see the humor in it. “So _that’s_ why you don’t like me—you think I’m—”

At that moment her cell phone went off in her pocket, the fetal Michael Jackson belting out about how blind he’d been and blah blah blah. She used to love the song, but now “I Want You Back” only represented her indentured servitude. Groaning, she pulled the phone from her pocket, knowing exactly who it was and what they wanted. “Look,” she told Rye, “I gotta take this call.”

When she answered she didn’t bother saying hello. “Yeah?”

Her boss’s dulcet tones, the ones he reserved for when he needed to manipulate his staff into doing what he wanted them to do, met her ear. “Katniss, my girl, light of my life…”

She sighed, having exactly zero patience at the moment for another man’s bullshit. “Cut it, Plutarch, and tell me what time you need me there.”

She stopped the dryer early, pulling her still-damp uniform and underwear out and rolling them all into a ball. Chancing a glance over her shoulder, she hoped Rye hadn’t noticed the disproportionate number of granny panties she owned—it wasn’t like she was dressing to please anyone these days, much less him, but all the same she didn’t want to be the one to disabuse him of his misogynistic notions of womanhood. (Heaven forbid a woman actually dress for comfort or anything.) But he wasn’t looking at her clothes or what she was doing—his eyes were locked on _her_ , boring a hole through her with their intensity.

She looked away, heated from the desperation she saw in his gaze, some unspoken need.

“Well, Rue called off with laryngitis, so the Mockingjays need a lead vocalist for our lunch show…”

“Yeah, yeah. I already asked what time you need me.”

“Ten minutes ago?”

“Mother of fuck.” Katniss slammed the dryer shut and threw her damp clothes into her basket. She’d have to go to work in a wet uniform, with damp underwear. She sighed, needing the money and knowing there was no way she could afford to say no. “Look, I’ll be in as soon as I can. You’ll just have to ask Cato and the Fuckboys to cover until I can get there.”

“Will do. You’re a lifesaver, Katniss.” Plutarch paused and added a touch of false timidity to his voice, “And you’ll stay for the double?”

“Yeah, of course I’ll work the fuckin’ double.”

Katniss hung up and dropped her phone onto her clean clothes, already walking toward the door. She looked over her shoulder at Rye, who was leaning forward in the chair, his hands clasped together between his knees.

“I know you have to go, but can we talk for just a second—please?” he asked.

She snorted and walked out the door, shooting back over her shoulder, “I think we’ve said enough, don’t you?”

Whatever he had to say, it didn’t matter. Because Rye Mellark wasn’t her problem anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ellen’s Stardust Diner is a real restaurant in NYC, but this is a work a fiction. Names, businesses, places, events, and incidents either are the product of my imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Contains direct and revised quotes from The Hunger Games books and films, none of which I own. 
> 
> See endnotes for song credits. 
> 
> With many thanks to my amazing team of betas on this chapter: everlylark, dandelion-sunset, jennagill, and eala-musings. I love you guys. Thank you for your support and friendship! <3
> 
> For lvfics (AO3: LavenderVanilla), who’s been waiting for *someone* to hear Katniss sing.

“Get your head in the game, Everdeen. It’s bad enough I gotta pick up the slack for _those_ fuckwads.” Cato jerked his head dismissively toward the two servers he oh-so-affectionately called Twiddly Dee and Twiddly Dumb-As-Shit because he refused to use their stage names of “Gloss” and “Brutus.” ( _Really, who came up with that crap anyway?_ ). Cato swiped at his sweaty face with a used dishrag before chucking it roughly back under the hot lights of the food window and then adjusted himself, shimmying his left leg as he repositioned his dick in his skintight pants. “I can’t hold down your section too.”

Katniss grimaced at the dishrag as she walked away, not sure what disgusted her more: the fact that the expeditor was going to use it to wipe off plates on their way out of the kitchen or that Cato had used a rag that had touched the diner’s food on his face.

Why on earth she had ever been worried about going to work with damp underwear was beyond her. Two minutes around Cato Taylor and her panties were drier than if they’d been run under an Xlerator hand dryer, with all the moisture wrung out like they’d been left hanging in the Kalahari Desert for a week. He was revolting to her in a simple, uncomplicated sort of way: he simply made her want to crawl out of her skin and slither as far away as she could. Easy as that. Every word out of his mouth, every move he made, every time his lungs drew in another vile breath, he repelled her, whether it was by commenting on a patron’s big tits or taunting a performer for singing off pitch. And even though he was conventionally attractive—something akin to a bronze statue—there was no commingling of desire there for her.

Not like there was for _him_...

As much as she hated to admit it, Cato had a point. Her head wasn’t in the game at all. Her thoughts had been monopolized by her encounter with Rye in the laundry room, analyzing every word he had spoken and every look he had given her. What was it he had wanted to say to her before she left? He looked desperate to say whatever it was, and that made her think maybe it hadn’t been just another lame attempt to get in her pants.

With her mind preoccupied, lunch service had been a disaster. She’d forgotten lyrics to half her songs, and she’d spilled a chocolate shake on top—literally on top—of an old lady’s head, and when Plutarch comped the entire bill he’d told her that if she made one more mistake like that he would have to dock her wages (the whopping $7.50 per hour she was raking in). So much for filling in for Rue to earn extra cash and some brownie points with the boss.

No good deed went unpunished at the Shitdust Diner.

Now that it was halfway through dinner service, she was exhausted and desperate for freedom. Some kid had squirted ketchup on her ass, a violent shade of red that made it look like she’d ragged through her clothes, and with all the running she’d been doing trying to cover her section, she knew that whatever makeup she’d been able to throw on during the train ride down was now smeared across her skin along with oil from the fryer. She felt disheveled and glistening, a rumpled mess of frayed nerves, long strands of her hair springing loose from her braid and hanging like some irritating, filthy fringed curtain around her face.

Her life was nothing if not the height of glamor.

As she pretended to listen attentively to one of her customers, a pock-faced man with more hair on his knuckles than on the whole of his head, deliberate between ordering the chicken fingers ( _foul, don’t do it_ ) or a cheeseburger ( _toxic waste, you could die_ ), she considered how amazing it was, the difference a few steps in this city could make—how they could transport someone so quickly from one world to another. One moment a person could be standing on a bustling sidewalk in the heart of Broadway, their eyes aglow from the flashing neon lights towering overhead, their soul filled with the restless energy of dreams springing to life around them. And then the next, by crossing a threshold, by swinging open a single door with panes of glass smudged by fingerprints and snot and whatever detritus of DNA people happened to leave in their wakes, they could find themselves dropped into a debris field, the wreckage of obliterated dreams, a wasteland of grease-slicked, checkered linoleum floors boxed in by walls covered in dusty black and white photos of long-dead movie stars, people who’d never have stooped so low as to find themselves in a place like this. The people who _did_ come here, a never-ending crowd of tourists (locals knew better than to be caught dead here), Middle Americans who wore Disney World t-shirts they’d bought on their last family vacation or unironic fanny packs that held their credit cards and passports, showed up for the illusion that anything—so long as it was grand—could happen in the Big Apple.

But dreams weren’t only made in this city. Sometimes they were destroyed too.

A few steps, and a person could find themselves in a nightmare. A few steps had done that to her, to her family, and to whatever dreams they’d once had. Ruined her. Ruined them. Ruined every single fucking thing. All it had taken was one person, stepping out into traffic.

From a dream to a nightmare in a single New York minute, that’s what it was for the endless stream of people who filtered in from off the street. They crowded into the restaurant lobby as they waited for tables to open up, unable—or unwilling—to see that they were treading upon the broken dreams of the people who painted smiles on their faces and sang from some twisted, choked off place in their guts while serving up pieces of their soul to be consumed for cheap entertainment. A crowd of people who refused to see how their dreams were built upon the ashes of someone else’s.

It could have been a comedy of errors, and if Katniss didn’t think too hard about it, she could even find it in herself to laugh. But really, under the sheen of sweat and the sickly coat of grease that covered every artificial, plasticized surface of this two-story, oversized shithole, it was just another tragedy, quietly endured day in, day out.

Feeling her phone buzzing in her waist apron, Katniss told the Sasquatch-handed man that a busboy would bring a water out to his table while he decided on his order and, without waiting for his reply, she rushed down the balcony stairs and into the ground floor bathroom to take the call.

“Yeah?” she whispered, the sound swallowed up by a toilet flushing in one of the nearby stalls and the soft grunts of an embarrassed woman caught desperately trying to empty her bowels on the down low.

“Bitch.”

Katniss winced as Johanna’s voice carried over the line, a sonic boom to the ear deafening her with one well-executed blast. Leave it to her to call when literally everyone else in the civilized world would text.

“What do you want?” Katniss hissed in a breathless rush, hating her job—but not enough to want to get sacked for taking a phone call while on the clock.

Nervously, she glanced over her shoulder as the bathroom door swung open and some patron from another section, a pregnant woman with a raven-haired toddler in tow, waddled as quickly as her swollen ankles would allow into the closest available stall. As the woman rotated herself like a rotisserie on a spit, trying to fit in the cramped space, she nodded sympathetically at Katniss as if to say _Girl, I know about tired_. Within seconds, Katniss could hear the toddler slapping the bare skin of her mother’s thighs with her tiny palms in time to a beat only she could hear, the woman sighing as she voided her overworked bladder.

...It seemed like everyone had some personal shit to take care of in this world, sometimes in the most public of ways.

As the bathroom door slowly slid shut, Katniss could see Plutarch’s ponderous frame winding its way through the restaurant, surveilling the performances of his staff (which mostly included making sure the waitresses’ uniforms were short enough in the legs and tight enough in the tits) and giving smarmy grins to the customers as they glutted themselves on their favorite kinds of cholesterol. As the door snicked shut, it swallowed the din of the restaurant, muffling Cato’s smooth tenor as he crooned, “ _Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear. And it shows them pearly white…_ ”

Not only did she not want to get sacked, but she had to wrap this call up quick and get back out there for a duet with ol’ Mack The Knife in a few minutes. Perversely, she was looking forward to it because she was in the mood to imagine her microphone was a shiv she could use to stab Cato in the throat or the heart or the skull—someplace terribly violent and inappropriate. “C’mon, spit it out, Jo. What’s going on?”

“You’ve got my purse.” Jo said it like Katniss had planned for her to leave it at her place instead of what had really happened— which was that she had stumbled out the door at 3 a.m. half-asleep and ubered her ass home without it.

“Hey, it’s not like I stole the damn thing.” _Only every last quarter in it_. She leaned closer to the mirror and tugged at her frazzled hair, running her hand under the tap and using her wet fingers to smooth down the flyaways along her part. Drying off her hands with the coarse paper towel from the dispenser, she scrubbed the paper across her face, wiping off whatever oil and makeup she could.

There, she thought, taking in her appearance in the grubby mirror. _One/100000th less like something that crawled out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show_.

“Well, you haven’t exactly busted your ass trying to get it back to me today, now have you? Lemme guess. It was laundry day.” She could hear the self-satisfied smirk in her friend’s voice and knew that, for all her shit talk, Jo considered it a mark of friendship that she could predict Katniss’s every move.

In one of the stalls the toilet flushed again, the loud gurgling of water followed by a drawn-out cough.

“Hey, what’s with all the noise? Wait. Katniss—are you talking to me _while taking a dump_?”

“No!” She lowered her voice and hissed, “I’m at work.”

“Oh, okay. So it’s someone _else_ taking a dump. That’s so much better,” Jo deadpanned. “Anyway, tell them I said it’s very nice to make their acquaintance. And that they should try to lay off the fiber.”

“Oh my _god_.” Katniss could feel the exasperation creeping its way in, gripping her by the neck and stinging at the backs of her eyes. Gouging the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, she sighed heavily. “Can we not do this now—or ever? Please?”

“Sure, sure, I see how it is.” Jo snickered softly to herself and pressed on, “Anyway, what time ya get off tonight?”

“I don’t know. Depends how slammed we still are.” Katniss pulled the phone away from her ear to glance at the time: _7:16_. She’d made it through the worst of the dinner rush, but in terms of the service she still had an eternity left to work—the last half of a double always dragged. At this point it felt like she’d never get off. “Maybe 8:30 or 9ish?”

“Bitchin’. We can meet at your place, then grab some drinks. Text my ass when you’re on your way home.”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t feel—”

True to her nature, Jo hung up before Katniss could argue her way out of hanging out. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but she was already dead on her feet—physically and morally depleted— and all she had the spirit for was curling up on her couch in nothing but her underwear and staring vacantly at whatever crap happened to be on TV until she passed out. Basically, the only face she wanted to look at tonight said _Toshiba_ on the bottom of it. But Jo had the spare key to her apartment, so there was precious little point in trying to back out of hanging out if that’s what her friend insisted on.

Taking a couple minutes to put herself back together, Katniss washed her hands and straightened out her plaid dress, pushing her small breasts up as high as she could to give herself some cleavage (as Cato liked to jeer at her, ‘the higher the nips, the bigger the tips’). She pinched her cheeks to try to get some color into them and then waited for the sound of Cato’s voice reaching its crescendo, howling that old “ _Macky's back in town_ ,” before she took a deep breath and plastered a smile onto her face.

It was showtime.

She hustled through the crowd, ducking under servers’ trays and weaving around renegade children, to make her way over to the lunch counter spanning the back wall, and hopped on top of the Formica counter, expertly easing her legs onto it so she wouldn’t flash her ass at any of the patrons lining the vinyl-covered stools in front of her (although that would probably lead to better tips too, she hadn’t quite sunk that far in life… yet).

Cato, in a gesture of mock chivalry, extended his hand to her and hauled her onto her feet. His actions appeared gentle, but his grip was rough, and as he grinned, flashing his shark white teeth at her, he leaned in closely to whisper in her ear, “‘Bout fuckin’ time you wiped your ass and got off the crapper, Everdeen. Thought I was gonna have to fly solo here.” When he pulled away he smiled at her winningly and offered her the spare mic he had somehow wedged into his back pants pocket. A true gentleman, if ever there was one.

“I’d think you’d be used to that by now—flying solo, that is.” Katniss smiled at him through gritted teeth and tried not to gag thinking about how the microphone was still warm from his body heat and a little moist from his sweat.

If her words phased him, he didn’t show it. He grinned wolfishly at the customers in the restaurant, his piercing blue eyes surveying the crowd, calculating the odds of who was likely to leave them the biggest tips for their performance. “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, guys and dolls, I’d like to take a moment to introduce to you one of the Stardust Diner’s lovely Pink Ladies, the gorgeous,” he cleared his throat, “the effervescent,” he smirked, “the stunningly talented,” he sneered, “Katniss Everdeen!”

He clasped their hands together and lifted her arm above her head like she’d won a boxing match, or anything at all, instead of losing—always losing. She counted the seconds until she could let go without shattering the illusion for the patrons, and, as soon as she could, she switched into character, sashaying across the counter to the opposite side, coquettishly swaying her hips as she tiptoed around dinner plates and flatware and the slippery spots left by sweating glasses of water. She’d sing from the far edge until he forced the issue by approaching her, faking at flirting and being smitten with her.

The crowd in the restaurant clapped half-heartedly, so engrossed by whatever shot they could take on their phones that they seemed to forget there were actual people in front of them. They tinkered with their flashes, their focus, their filters, oblivious to the woman on the counter, abject and servile, a singer who was as good as voiceless in a grotesque pantomime.

Katniss made herself sound sultry and soulful as the background music began to play. “This one might be familiar to one or two of you in here. It’s called—” she broke off for a fraction of a second, the movement of the front door as it opened catching her attention out of the corner of her eye. She forced herself to look at Cato, to imagine his cropped blond hair was shaggy and his blue eyes were playful. “‘ _You’re The One That I Want_.’”

As she began to rock her hips back and forth, dancing to the music, she heard a small voice in the front of the restaurant whooping joyfully, a sound of unbridled glee that was vaguely familiar but she couldn’t place before Cato’s voice drowned it out. “ _I got chills. They’re mul-ti-ply-ing. And I’m losing control…_ ”

She waited for her cue and then began to sing along, closing her eyes so she didn’t have to see the man across from her or the way he leered and thrust his hips, how he stalked toward her like a predator, like she was something meant to be chewed up and devoured. “ _You better shape up, ‘cause I need a man_ ,” she sang to the dusty rafters, to the cloud-choked, contrail-covered sky somewhere overhead, somewhere she couldn’t see, “ _And my heart is set on you_.”

He placed a hand on her hip, gripping her tightly so that she’d look up at him and meet his eyes. They were as hard as the life she knew, as empty as the promises she made, as hollow as the words she sang. They reminded her of the city at night, of lying in bed, hounded by loneliness. Cato’s mouth sang sweetly back to her while his eyes threw daggers. They warned her to play nice, to work for the tips, to hustle and play the game, and as he wound his arm around her waist, his knee working its way between her thighs, his fingers dipping dangerously close to the top of her ass, their audience erupted into wolf whistles and catcalls. It made her think of Glimmer getting fingerfucked in the hall.

Ripping her eyes away from Cato and pushing on his stomach in a way that looked tender instead of trapped, she glanced up at her section in the balcony. The restaurant hostess, Lavinia, was working her way up the metal stairs to the mezzanine, leading a small boy who was eagerly nipping at her heels over to Katniss’ empty four top. _She knew that boy_.

And behind him was...

“ _...You’re the one that I want_.” As he made his way up the stairs, she sang it to his back, to his broad shoulders covered in a simple gray t-shirt, the fabric stretched tight over muscles made hard, she now knew, by hauling flour and hoisting heavy pallets, from working every day to build something from scratch.

“ _Oo-oo-oo, honey, The one that I want_ ,” she said to the back of his blue Mets cap, the hat that barely tamed his riotous blond waves.

She knew those shoulders, that ass, that hair, the way it brushed the collar of his shirt. She would know it anywhere, had been looking for it everywhere, and her stomach clenched in response, her thighs clenching too, as she forced herself to confess, “ _You’re the one that I want_.”

For a moment she allowed herself to say it—not in character, but as her real self—the truth she’d kept hidden in some dark recess, some secret cavern in her heart. For one second she told the whole of New York City, with all her heart, that the man over there—Rye Mellark—was the one she wanted.

She had no idea why he’d shown up to her restaurant or what he could possibly have to say to her that couldn't wait until tomorrow. He couldn't have shown up just to collect the free coney dog and milkshake she’d offered him, could he? For him to be here now, there had to be something important he wanted—no, _needed_ —to see her about, right? At that thought her heart began to rebel, speeding up in her chest until her hands shook and a warm, kindling sensation, something that felt like hope, began to infect her blood, curling its way throughout her body, unfurling and stretching, winding its way along her limbs to the tips of her fingers and toes.

She had tried hating him and then avoiding him, but he had made both equally impossible. When it came down to it, the truth was that the very sight of him made her feel… happy. It made her feel… alive. It made her feel anything at all, and there was something of a miracle in that.

This realization hadn’t fully sunken in when she noticed the woman behind him on the stairs, a curvy blonde with an hourglass figure that swelled in all the right places. The woman’s hand reached out and touched his forearm as she carefully maneuvered the steps in her heels, a sign that every woman in the world knew meant: _I’m with him_.

There, following Rye, was a goddamn walking, breathing version of Marilyn Monroe. In her retro A-line dress covered in a cherry print, she looked like a fifties pinup, the kind of girl who’d drink a martini while hanging on James Dean’s arm at the Chateau Marmont. So _she_ was the one Rye would be with tonight—and when he was done with her, tomorrow there would be someone else—predictably, reliably, like a clock chiming on the hour—there would be someone else.

And Katniss would never be that someone.

She wasn’t a Marilyn—she was a Norma Jeane. Guys like him didn’t want the troubled, difficult brunette—the real woman wracked by her insecurities and fears and failures—when he could have the giggling, simpering bombshell riding his dick instead. And even if he did want to sleep with her, she would never capitulate. Because he didn’t want her in any real way, and what he had to offer would ruin her. He would _win_.

Maybe he already had.

Her voice broke, missing a note, but she forced herself to try harder, to burrow down deeper, to find the guts she needed to keep smiling and dancing, acting like a lovesick idiot—

It wasn’t as much of an act. She felt like a fool for having hoped—for _always_ hoping—when she knew exactly who he was and what he did.

He was a liar, a fuckboy, a legendary ignitor of panties. He was a lothario and pussy champ, who also somehow managed to be a gifted baker, a successful businessman, and a natural with kids. He was corrupting her city one youth, one asiago cheese bagel, and one sated, profoundly orgasmed woman at a time—a triple threat to Gotham. He corrupted everyone and everything.

Now she knew why Rye had come to the diner and what he had wanted her to see, and the knowledge fortified her, the anger washing over her, violent and volcanic, coating her vocal cords like a lahar. Her voice grew louder, stronger, as her insides roiled and quaked. He hadn’t only come for the free food she’d offered—he’d come to make her _pay for it_.

When Rye reached the top of the steps he looked down to the lunch counter, his face flushing—probably in embarrassment for her—as he made eye contact with Katniss. The anger she felt at seeing him here threatened to overtake her—that he should bring a woman on some fucked up kind of date, with a _kid_ , here to _her_ place, to lord over her servitude and show her how insignificant she was—it was too much.

Katniss stalked after Cato, carelessly nudging and kicking aside plates and napkins as she belted out the rest of the song, letting her hands fall to his shoulders and her nose brush the tip of his as they danced their routine together. She laid it on thicker than she ever had before, smiling up at the prick adoringly, assuring him he was the one she wanted over and over, _yes indeed_ , willing every single person in the restaurant to believe it too—but one person more than the rest.

If he came for a show, she’d give him one.

As soon as the last note had been sung she wrapped her hand around Cato’s to switch off his microphone. Pressing her fist to his chest, she lifted herself onto her toes and whispered into the shell of his ear, “And we lived happily ever after. Now get the fuck away from me.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rye frown and look away, his head lifting to look up at Lavinia, who was standing at the end of the booth, patiently passing out a stack of menus.

Cato barked out a laugh and hopped off the counter, immediately circling the ground floor of the restaurant with the large, plastic forty-ounce cup he used to collect tips. He made a point to home in on every young customer with breasts he could find, laying on what precious little charm he had so that they would believe he was trying to get them to part their legs when what he really wanted was for them to part with their money.

Busy nursing her resentment for Rye and everything he stood for, Katniss tried not to think about how he had waited for his date to slide into the booth before sliding in after her. And, when she couldn't do that, she conjured up the sound of Jo’s caustic voice quoting something she’d read once in a Women’s Studies textbook and had decided to carry with her as one of her life’s many mantras: _Chivalry is nothing but masked contempt_.

But even that didn’t help. Rye hadn’t looked especially contemptuous—or the blonde especially stricken that he’d waited for her before taking a seat.

So she focused instead on finding the other servers who would be singing backup for her, two leggy blondes no one could tell apart and who, for that very reason, everyone simply called “the Legs.”

Leg 1 and Leg 2 made their way over to the lunch counter from opposite sides of the restaurant, depositing their serving trays at each end and cocking their hips. They threw their hands up in the air in a vampy pose, the designated cue for the music to start.

"I want you to listen up, everyone," Katniss began as the first notes of the recorded background music blared out over the loudspeaker. Her eyes swept the room from her perch on the counter, their ferocity commanding the rapt attention of every person there, while the Legs began to shimmy their hips from where they stood on their marks. "I've got a little something to say... about boys... and the games they like to play."

She was going off-script now, and somehow everyone knew it. She could feel every eye riveted on her—one pair in particular from up in the balcony that burned a bright shade of blue, a fire so intense it heated her face even from across the room. A hush spread throughout the diner, disrupted only by the sound of a solitary piece of silverware clinking on a plate—a blue-haired woman in the front was a few decades past caring what anyone had to say about boys, much less some waitress singing karaoke in Midtown. But everyone else—those not accustomed to thinking themselves above or beyond love—watched her with gobsmacked expressions, the nachos or onion rings they'd been shoveling into their faces frozen mid-air in front of them.

Because she’d caught them all off guard. She'd been cute before, maybe a little sexy and sweet. A Sandy, a Pink Lady, a breezy summertime romance.

But now she was a girl on fire, engulfing the room with her scorn. Her voice was smoldering and crackling with ire, and the moths fluttered to it, mesmerized, convinced by the beauty of the flames that the fire was wisdom.

"Boys will only break your heart," she told them, her voice low and unforgiving. "They'll use you, and then lose you, and leave you all alone."

She hazarded another glance toward her section and saw Rye almost solemnly looking down at her. His right arm had been resting on the booth behind his date’s shoulders, but as he made eye contact with Katniss he leaned forward, placing both his elbows on the table, crossing his hands in what looked like supplication. As if to pray: _please don't blow this for me. She doesn't know_.

Well, too damned bad. Marilyn was about to find out the truth about the manwhore next door.

"And some boys," she said, her hips now moving in time to the bass, and Katniss watched Rye watching her as she rolled them back and forth, "Leave you feeling bitter...” she met his eyes and tipped her chin at him,” because their words taste so sweet."

Katniss opened her mouth, and the lyrics found their way out, rolling off her tongue like a candied kind of venom. " _Sweet talking guy... talking sweet kinda lies. Don't you believe in him, if you do, he'll make you cry..._ "

She watched the blonde woman put her hand on Rye's forearm and lean toward him, whispering something in his ear, her red sweetheart lips curling into a small smile. He leaned in to hear whatever she had to say and nodded enthusiastically, grinning and mouthing something to her like, "I know," before turning his attention back to the show.

Katniss scowled at the woman's hand, how it lingered a little too long on Rye's arm, at how the woman's breasts filled out her dress in a way her own never would. " _He'll send you flowers_ ," Katniss warned, thinking about cheese bagels and lavender honey cupcakes, " _and paint the town with another girl_."

The Legs chimed in to underscore his unfaithfulness, and at the sound of their voices, suddenly Katniss didn't feel so alone.

He'd toyed with so many women before. She imagined now, instead of confessing to the city that she was lovelorn over a player, the city was confessing to her that it was heartsick over him too.

He was playing the entire city for a fool, one woman at a time.

" _He's a sweet talkin' guy_ ," the city sang, and Katniss, pained by the truth of it, closed her eyes and added, " _But he's my kind of guy_."

And he was, which was only her fault—it was her fault he was the one she wanted, that there was no one else, and that there hadn't been anyone else in as long as she could remember. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for everything, or at least not that.

When she looked up into the balcony she ached from what she saw. Ached to be touched by him, to know him, to love him, to make him smile. To feel his mouth on hers—

“ _Sweeter than sugar, kisses like wine_ ,” she sang, feeling a little drunk on the sight of him.

“ _Oh, he’s so fine_ ,” the Legs agreed.

“ _Don’t let him under your skin_ ,” Katniss warned—too late, “‘ _Cause you’ll never win_.”

“ _No, you'll never win_.” The Legs waved their pointer fingers and twirled, and the raven-haired toddler Katniss had seen in the bathroom stood up in her booth, shimmying and squealing as she tried to dance too.

The young boy at Rye’s booth—the one he’d called Jopa at the bakery—slid his paper placemat across the counter, stabbing his finger vociferously at something on it, his gap-toothed smile lighting up his face like a jack-o-lantern.

Rye smiled back at Jopa and reached across the table, ruffling his hair affectionately like the boy were his own son. “ _Don’t give him love today_ ,” she sang, her conviction faltering, “ _tomorrow he’s on his way_.”

She saw the boy look over to Marilyn and mouth something that included the word “Mommy,” and with two syllables Katniss’ heart constricted in her chest, collapsing in on itself. “ _He’s a sweet talkin’ guy_.” Tears pooled in her eyes, and she didn’t know where they came from, much less how to make them go away.

“ _Sweet talkin’ guy_ ,” the Legs sang back, dancing now around the restaurant, hands trailing over the shoulders and hands of every guy they passed, working the room. Katniss didn’t care who they worked as long as they didn’t work _him_.

She clenched her fist and pressed it to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut to will the world away. “ _But he’s my kind of guy_.” She hoped no one would notice the warble that had crept into her voice from her unshed tears. Somewhere in the din of the room the Legs repeated themselves, and Katniss asked them—asked the city and the millions of people in it, “ _Why do I love him like I do_?”

It was an impossible question, and so it went unanswered, echoing against the walls as the music swelled to an interlude.

She kneeled and swung her legs over the edge of the counter, lowering her feet to the floor so she couldn’t see him in the balcony. It was the only way she was going to be able to get through this performance, by pretending he wasn’t just out of her grasp.

Until now she hadn’t thought a man like him was capable of having a family—anything, anyway, beyond the demands of brotherhood. But Jopa clearly belonged to Rye and the blonde, and although they could not both be biological parents to the boy, the three of them all seemed somehow to belong to each other. If the blonde was Jopa’s mother, what did that make Rye to the boy? To the woman?

He hadn’t come here, then, solely to mock her or watch her make a fool of herself. No. He’d come here to destroy her world by making her question everything she thought she knew about it—

He’d taken his family out to dinner, and he wanted her to see it.

With them out of sight, it grew less impossible to go on. She moved through the restaurant, thankful the song didn’t call for a smile, and let muscle memory carry her through the rest of the performance.

As the last note carried through the diner, a temporary hush took over. She closed her eyes and savored the silence, imagining that she was alone in her bed, her rejection and shame hidden away beneath the covers, instead of on display for everyone to see.

From up in the balcony she heard a loud clapping and child's voice hooting. When she raised her eyes she saw Jopa, standing now at the railing of the balcony, his arms hooked over one of the rails, as he clapped down at her.

She could see why, of all the people for Rye to love in the city, it would be Jopa and his mother. They were beautiful and good. They seemed like the best sort of people, open-hearted and warm.

They were everything she was not.

Katniss smiled briefly up at the boy, a pained expression that felt like a grimace, and he smiled back at her, turning around and running back to his booth. He gestured his hands wildly as he spoke to his mother and Rye, but whatever he might have had to say was swallowed up by the applause and the din of the restaurant.

The Legs circled the ground floor, each of them opening the pockets of their waist aprons to collect tips because male patrons always tipped better if they thought they had a shot of their hands brushing against some skin. Katniss switched off her mic and tucked it into one of the side pockets of her apron, grabbing a tray and forcing herself to head over to the stairs and up to her section.

It was the last thing on earth she felt up to doing—she'd rather clean the diner's toilets with her toothbrush—but she had no choice.

She put off the inevitable as long as she could, collecting tips, taking orders, and checking in on every other table in her section before she approached Rye's booth. She couldn't be sure, but she imagined three sets of eyes following her every movement, tracking her as she wound her way through the crowded section, skirting around chairs and other servers.

Finally, when it could no longer be avoided, she turned around to face them. Jopa was chatting cheerfully to the adults, who were seated across from him and sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, a scant amount of space between them—well, Katniss conceded, perhaps it was as much as half a foot, but they still _looked_ together, like they'd known each other since the dawn of time. Her eyes flitted beneath the tabletop to see if their feet were touching, and she was surprised to see the blonde's legs were crossed away from Rye. _Huh_. She wouldn't have thought that. She'd half-expected the blonde to have kicked off a heel to stroke one of his muscular calves with her bare foot. _I would_ , she thought, before she could banish the rogue thought.

A few steps, that's all it would take. She could manage that. She counted to ten to calm herself before she moved toward them, making the effort to choke down all her anger and disappointment and embarrassment, and then walked up to their table.

Their eyes locked on her immediately, but she only had eyes for one of them.

"Uh—hey," Rye said, shifting awkwardly, like he was the one who was mortified. He grabbed the bill of his baseball cap and took it off, resting it next to him on the cracked vinyl material of the booth, and then wrapped his hands around the cup of black coffee the busboy had brought out for him. Katniss watched one of his thumbs twitch—from all the caffeine, no doubt.

At this distance, standing above him, she could see the way the overhead lights made his hair and long, tangled eyelashes glow like spun gold. His disheveled mop of hair reminded her of the handspun sugar he’d used to decorate his cupcakes—a delicate tangle of fine strands that begged to be touched. She tried not to admire it, keeping the hand that wasn't holding her tray clenched in a fist at her side so she wouldn’t accidentally reach out and run her fingers through it.

Marilyn smiled up at her with lips the exact color of the cherries on her dress and eyes the same unnatural shade as blue raspberry-flavored candy, and rested her right hand lightly on Rye's wrist. Her thumb stroked once over the top of his, the twitch of his thumb subsiding at her touch.

_Yeah, yeah. I get it, bitch. He's yours_ , Katniss thought, self-loathing overwhelming her the instant the blonde opened her mouth.

"You sounded so great down there," she said warmly. "With a voice like that you could sell out the Garden."

"Yeah,” Jopa piped in, pointing to Rye. “He said you sing so good even the pigeons would stop to listen."

Rye laughed in reply, sounding a little queasy, and used the hand that wasn't pinned down by Marilyn's beautifully manicured claw to dig a knuckle into the inside corner of his eye. Katniss' eyes narrowed in disapproval at him, but she couldn't say she was surprised. He'd tried picking up on her before in front of a woman he'd just slept with—who was to say he wouldn't do it beforehand too? And she had a hard time believing he was above using a kid to help him.

"Is that so?" she asked, keeping her voice even.

"Ah, yeah. I ahhh—” he began, his face growing redder by the second.

She cut him off before he could finish his thought, deciding it was best to hurry along whatever fuckery this was and get back to her other tables. "Well, thanks,” she said in a clipped tone, trying to mask the effect her rebel heart had on the rest of her body. Her feet were rooted to the floor, cemented in place by her determination not to run away, but her heart felt like it was running the NYC marathon, breezing across the East River as it rounded the twenty-first mile. It was in the zone—running, pounding, chasing after something she could never have—the useless traitor. Katniss resolved to rip it out of her chest and toss it down the trash chute to the incinerator as soon as she got home.

She looked to the blonde and gave a sincere nod, acknowledging the compliment the woman had paid her. “And thank you.” She was genuinely touched by the sweetness of Rye’s date toward her. The woman didn’t seem to have a jealous or spiteful bone in her body, despite the fact that Rye knew both of them—not that she had anything to be jealous of, of course. But the woman could have made this awful situation infinitely worse by assuming the worst of her, and for that kindness alone she was grateful.

Her eyes flicked back over to Jopa when she heard him flip over his placemat and begin to furiously scribble on it, shading in something he had drawn with one of the three primary-colored crayons the diner had given him as part of their standard issue. It was upside down from her vantage point, but it appeared to be a bluebird perched in a tree, and next to the tree were two stick figures—a girl in a red dress and a boy in a blue cap, holding a bouquet of yellow flowers in his hand.

The stick figures were engulfed in what could only be described as a cyclone of red hearts.

Katniss wondered if he didn’t know how to draw cherries—the female stick figure’s dress looked a little too plain without it. She also wondered how it didn’t make Rye want to bolt out the door and into the middle of Broadway, seeing the kid basically marrying off his mom to him in a storm of hearts.

“Hey, sweetie,” the blonde interjected, speaking to her son with a tinge of urgency. When the boy ignored her, she pressed on. “Um, sweetheart?” She looked meaningfully at him and nudged her head once in Rye’s direction, as if to signal something.

Jopa looked up at her without guile, his hand still scribbling on the page, the crayon well outside the lines of whatever creature now sat in the tree he’d drawn. It had started to look like a demonic Elmo. “ _She’s_ sweetheart,” he said, pointing briefly with his crayon before returning to his artwork, drawing a smile on the stick figure woman’s face that, from upside down, looked like a scowl.

Maybe the stick figure wanted to die of mortification too.

Katniss held her breath, not knowing what the boy’s mother would think of Jopa’s nickname for her—or the fact that her son even knew her. She refused to consider what Rye thought about either of those things, although she thought she heard him groan under his breath.

“Isn’t there—ah—tic tac toe on the other side you wanted to play?” Marilyn reached out with one hand and grabbed the corner of the placemat, tugging on it to encourage Jopa to lift his hands up and flip it over.

The awkwardness at the table was palpable, an embarrassed pall hanging over the adults that made the world around them—anything but each other—suddenly enthralling and worthy of the whole of their attention. Jopa, oblivious to whatever turmoil he had caused, started to play tic tac toe against himself, filling the boards with Xs and Os, while the blonde scratched at her elbow and Rye grasped the handle of his coffee mug and exhaled roughly. He looked a little sick, like he might bolt out onto Broadway after all.

Maybe it _was_ a touchy subject.

“Well—ahem—anyway.” Katniss cleared her throat and began the spiel she'd spoken so often she could recite it in her sleep. She kept her voice as neutral as possible, not wanting to encourage Rye to do… whatever... it was he always did or to be rude to Jopa or his mother either. “Welcome to the Stardust Diner. My name is Katniss, and I'll be taking your order tonight. Have you dined with us before?"

"Katniss, huh," Rye murmured, ignoring her question. The low timbre of his voice barely carried over the noise of the restaurant, and the way he repeated her name to himself made it seem as though he was relishing it like a milkshake—like the weight of it on his tongue was cool and sweet and satisfied some craving he’d once had. He nodded thoughtfully, running the pad of his thumb over the rim of his mug, circling it back and forth in one smooth arc.

She’d always sort of hated her name, regretting it wasn’t something conventional and ordinary. It had always been so easy for the bitches at school to mock her for it, to roll their eyes and flip their hair and chant “Katniss smells like cat piss.” As an adult, she’d relented a little in her hatred of it because it reminded her of her father, who had chosen it for her. But now—now it sounded like the answer to a question she never knew had existed. Rye made each letter sound sacred and sexual, the sibilants at the end like a hushed secret shared after a stolen kiss, and instantly she regretted having told him her real name because she _knew_ no one else would ever be able to make her name sound like _that_.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, not realizing her lungs had withered and dried into rattling tumbleweeds, and the tension in her stomach eased a notch.

The blonde pulled her hand away from Rye's and rested it on her lap beneath the table, where her left hand was also resting—Katniss couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for her, since it seemed like Rye had forgotten about her altogether.

"It’s nice to meet you, Katniss," the blonde said, sounding sincere, but Katniss wouldn't know if the other woman looked it because she had fallen into the abyss of Rye's pupils as he gazed up at her. They were massive and cavernous, like underwater trenches encircled by the warm, tropical shallows of his irises, and she felt herself sliding, slipping, reeling headlong into their vertiginous depths.

There was once a child at the table, a beautiful blonde woman, three sweating glasses of water, four sets of water-stained silverware, and a pile of oversized menus. There was once a bustling diner filled with laughing, hacking, smiling, or impassive people. Once there was even music and swearing and the awkward silences that stretched between people who barely knew each other but wanted—so desperately—to reach that place where silence was a comfortable and companionable thing and not a death sentence for intimacy.

But now there was only _him_ —and only her—and only the agonizing space between the two of them. It felt like a web, so finely woven it was almost invisible, but still tangible. She couldn’t see it, but it tickled and irritated her skin. She wanted to swipe at it, to pull him closer, grasping onto his shirt, and to let herself be soothed by the press of the cotton to her face.

Blindly, she groped for the notepad and pen in her apron so she wouldn’t have to look away from him. She reminded herself she hated him to drown out the nagging thought that she needed him—needed something else from him, anyways, other than an enemy.

“Do you need more time?” She swallowed thickly, pressing the pen to the pad, and noticed Rye’s eyes were the same color as the clot of ink pooling where the nib of the pen touched the paper. She was going to have to get a new pen. A black one. “Or do you already know what you want?”

“I already know what I want,” he answered without missing a beat, his face so flushed the color had spread to the back of his neck, an angry, mottled sort of red, the color of spanked flesh, kiss-bruised lips, or red welts on wrists. Nothing about it spoke of milkshakes or coney dogs—it was the color of want, embarrassment, and maybe even a little bit of betrayal. He looked to Jopa and the blonde and scratched at the back of his neck, amending, “We all do.”

“Okay.” Katniss coughed to make some sort of excuse for the raspiness in her voice. “Who wants to go first then?”

“Del, that’s you,” Rye said. He nudged his elbow into the side of Maril—no, _Del_.

Katniss looked at the blonde, her mind scanning through the possibilities of what the name could be short for as the blonde’s lips began to move. _Delilah_ , _Delaney_ , _Delores_. Or _Adeline_. No, it was probably motherfucking _Adele_. How young had she been, anyway, when she had her son? She didn’t look a day over twenty-one.

“—fudge sundae, no nuts,” Del was saying. She nodded to her son, “And he’ll have a cookies and cream milkshake—”

“With extra whipped cream!” Jopa chirped, poking the tip of his tongue between the gaps in his front teeth, pumping his legs under the table in excitement.

Despite herself, Katniss laughed. “I think that can be arranged,” she said wryly, making the notation on the order slip to load the whipped cream sky high for the kid.

“Juan Pablo, what do we say?” she heard his mother coaching him.

When Katniss looked up from her notepad, she saw Rye smiling up at her. Their eyes locked, and his expression faltered a shade, as if he were unsure whether it was allowed. Her stomach fluttered anxiously, equally unsure whether she should smile back.

“Can I have extra whipped cream pleeeeease,” said the little boy, solving the dilemma for both of them. Katniss tore her eyes away from Rye to look at Jopa.

“Sure thing, kiddo.”

The boy beamed at her. “Thank you... _beautiful girl_.” He blurted the last two words emphatically like he was a shaken soda bottle, the words bubbling and exploding out of him, but he flipped his placemat back over without blinking an eye and returned to his drawing of the stick figures. He began to draw a third, smaller stick figure. It looked like a child—and just like that, the boy and girl stick figures became a family.

Katniss rubbed at her stomach, pressing her damp palm against the coarse fabric of her dress. “And…” she forced herself to look at him, to look down at Rye as he looked back up at her, and somehow she found a way to finish the question. “...What do _you_ want?”

There were a hundred different answers to that question she could imagine the man next door saying, all of which were sexual positions, but as he sat in front of her now, she half-hoped he’d give her the one answer she wanted to hear—and to mean it in every sense of the word, not just the pretty or the gratifying, but the messy and ugly and terrifyingly broken. _You_. She wanted him to say “you” and to mean it, to be a better man than who he was—the kind of man he was in this moment—someone who would sit in a shitty, overpriced diner in the most crowded corner of hell just to make a little kid happy.

Rye licked his lower lip, the tip of his perfectly pink tongue wetting his perfectly pink mouth, and she wanted to punch him for it—or she told herself she did, anyway, because it was easier than admitting how badly she wanted to kiss him. His eyes fell to her mouth, and she realized she’d been biting her lower lip, trying not to let it betray her too.

Traitor heart. Traitor lungs. Traitor stomach. Traitor fingers. She’d have to set her entire body on fire to get rid of all the ways it wanted him.

He looked away first, reaching for the menus at the edge of the table, and, standing them upright, he began to restack them neatly by tapping the bottoms on the tabletop. She involuntarily took half a step back when his hand reached out in her direction, feeling foolish as soon as she realized he hadn’t been reaching out to touch her like any of the half-dozen pervs a day who tried to cop a feel.

“Do you make the desserts?” he asked, holding up the menus for her to take.

The menus were large, and she grabbed them from the top edge—as far as she could get from his hand—but it was still close enough to send sparks shooting into the air. It looked like the Fourth of July, both of their hands still holding their respective sides of the menus, illuminated by sparkling, pinwheeling rays of light that dazzled and blinded her traitor eyes.

“Me, personally, or the restaurant?”

“You, personally.”

In the lower periphery of her vision she could see him scratch his leg with one hand, the pressure of it as it slid over his knee cap forcing his bouncing leg to still.

“It depends,” she said suspiciously, trying to figure out his angle. “The pies and cheesecakes and cookies, no. They’re made by a line cook every morning—although I don’t know why you’d order any of those. I suppose you think you could make them better yourself.”

At that, a small smile quirked at the corner of his mouth, and Katniss noticed his posture ease, the tension in his shoulders melting away at what he mistook as a good-natured jab. “Naturally,” he agreed, nodding. “But what about all the ice cream desserts... do you make those?”

Katniss picked at a dried piece of food on the plastic cover of the top menu, some cheese coagulate that Lavinia had missed when she’d wiped them down. “Yeah,” she said, “I make those.”

“And what’s your favorite to make?”

She arched an eyebrow at the question, scrambling for a split second to settle on a bullshit answer, but she came up short. "Can I be honest?" If he was teasing or mocking her she could detect no trace of it. He looked sincere, almost boyishly curious.

He shrugged and gave her a small frown that reminded her of how he'd looked down at her singing on the countertop in Cato’s arms. “Always,” he said.

Sure. Now he was Mr. Honesty-is-the-best-policy.

"I hate making them all."

He laughed. "In that case, I'll just take a hot chocolate."

Katniss narrowed her eyes and glanced out of one of the second-story windows. The sultry evening air was so thick it seemed to dance above the hoods of the cars on the street. "It's hot as—” she glanced at the boy across the booth, “—heck out there."

"Yeah, but the air’s on in here, and I'm really in the mood all of a sudden for some hot chocolate. It’s weird. Besides," he added, "I can always share some of their desserts. Right?" He looked at the boy and the woman he called _Del_ , each of whom pretended to deliberate the question. He laughed again, and the sound made Katniss want to bottle it so that she could inject it directly into her veins and overdose on it. It coursed through her, doing things to her body chemistry that ought to be illegal. "I see how it is," he griped playfully when neither one of them immediately answered.

Katniss' stomach dropped at the mental image of Rye's mouth on the blonde woman's spoon, his tongue greedily laving the melting cream off the metal—as if it wasn't going to be in far more intimate places later on tonight (like on those perky, voluminous breasts or in the crux of her thighs). "I'll bring out an extra spoon for you two," she said, nodding curtly and walking away as quickly as she could, breezing past a table of guests trying to flag her down.

Every step she took away from him was driven by one imperative—she had to get him out of her restaurant. Hell, she had to get him out of her life—maybe she should move somewhere he would never find her, some place he'd never go. Like Staten Island. God forbid.

Working as quickly as she could, she made their desserts, the loveliest hot fudge sundae for Marilyn Fucking Monroe and a milkshake for Jopa. She squirted so much whipped cream onto the shake and into the extra tin accompanying it that she emptied the better half of a can for him. But he deserved it.

As for Rye's hot chocolate—she wasn't sure what he deserved, but she gave him whipped cream too, and, when that didn't look like enough, she drizzled hot chocolate over the top. That made the chocolate sauce looked naked, clinging uselessly on top of a cloud of whipped cream, so she sprinkled M&Ms onto it to add a dash of color. Taking a step back from her Picasso, she grew embarrassed because it was so painfully obvious she was presenting her heart to him in that chipped white ceramic mug. She couldn't hand him that—it might as well be covered in sweetheart candies that said "Will U B Mine?"

"Don't even think about it, Everdeen," Cato sneered from behind as he passed her in the kitchen, mistaking her appraisal of it for hunger. "That shit'll go straight to your thighs... not that you couldn't use a little help filling out that dress."

She closed her eyes and sighed, knowing what she needed to do but hating that it was her only option.

"Cato," she said, her voice resigned and hoarse.

"'Sup?" He dropped his tray next to the expeditor, who began loading it up with plates from the window.

"I need you to... do me a favor."

"I'm sure you do, darlin', but my dick's not desperate." He breezed past her, already headed toward the swinging door that led back into the dining room.

At his words she threw a handful of extra napkins onto her tray. "God, do you _always_ have to be such an asshole?"

He laughed carelessly, cocking an eyebrow at her, but paused at the door. "Fine. I'll bite. But only because you called me by my favorite name. Whaddya need?"

She nudged her tray an inch in his direction on the counter, pointing to the desserts. "I need you to take that to table 38 for me, no questions asked." When she saw him begin to protest, she continued, "And I can take your food out to your table for you."

He glanced at the tray on his shoulder and then looked at hers, no doubt weighing the pros and cons of taking the lighter tray versus the effort of hauling his ass up the stairs. Worried he was going to say no, she sweetened the pot for him to clinch the deal.

“And I’ll take your next song, whatever it is, and give you all the tips I earn for it. Just cover my section for a couple minutes while I’m on.”

“Deal.” He loped over in three steps to where she stood, dropping his heavy tray on the counter and swooping hers up in a single fluid motion. He grabbed the napkins off her tray and tossed them onto the counter by her hand. “Hey, pad your bra with these and make it count, alright? Thirty-eight, you said?”

She exhaled in relief, surprised he’d made it that easy for her. One barb about her tits and no solicitation for head—Cato was practically being a saint. “Yeah.”

He walked away, pushing the kitchen door open with his ass, and tipped his chin at her. “That goes to 13. And you’re on after Twiddly Dumb-As-Shit out there finishes murdering whatever the fuck song that’s supposed to be.”

She scooped up the tray, hoisting it onto her shoulder for support, and grunted under the weight of it. She’d probably have to ice her wrist later because of this. “Which song am I doing?” she called out to him.

He shot his answer back over his shoulder, already halfway to the stairs. “The Valli song.”

Her stomach plummeted to her feet.

She knew it by heart, every single word. Of course she did. All the servers had heard each other’s songs so many times, covering or singing backup for each other, that they could probably sing them in reverse. But she knew it from her old life, too, from when she was a knobby-kneed, bright-eyed fifteen-year-old walking beside her father under the marquee of the August Wilson Theatre and into the sold out auditorium.

They’d never had much money, and it had been a rare treat, going to a Broadway show—but to her father the Four Seasons were the kind of thing that was worth the sacrifice. He’d wanted her to know their songs and to love them like he did. And she _did_ fall in love that night, the way a person only does when they are young and not yet broken—madly, with their whole heart, all at once, without reservation or care or thought to what must inevitably happen.

Then, a couple years later he’d died, and with him she’d let the music die too. It had seemed like the only right thing to do, burying her love alongside her grief.

The theater stood a block-and-a-half away from the diner—a few steps, really, in the grand scheme of things—but it was so far removed from who and where she was now it might as well be on the other side of the world or in another century. She hadn’t let herself really think about it in years.

She dropped off the food at Cato’s table and refilled the sodas for his customers from a couple of watered-down pitchers of Coke, mentally bracing herself for what she had to do next. Brutus’ gruff voice butchered the last notes of his song, a hackneyed version of Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” and she walked over to the lunchtop counter and pulled herself up, taking the mic out of her apron and switching it on. She didn’t wait for the smattering of applause in the room to die out before she cued the music to begin, afraid of losing whatever heart she had left.

As the song began to play, she lifted her face up to the spotlights and closed her eyes. She saw him immediately, as though he were imprinted on the backs of her eyelids. Her father. His eyes were gray like hers, his hair dark, his nose a little crooked where it had once been busted in a schoolyard fight. He looked healthy and strong—maybe a bit lanky, maybe a bit lean, but _alive_. Nothing at all like the charred, mangled mess of a man she saw when she closed her eyes at night—the person he’d been in the end, when he was no longer a person at all.

She found him in the gaps between the notes, in the silences and spaces, in the absence of her senses—the place where all our dead linger. The horns in the song were plaintive, but the rhythm was joyful, and there was something about what it meant to live that rang true in that juxtaposition. Sound and silence. Life and death. Joy and sorrow. It was all intertwined in a timeless melody.

When she began to sing, she recalled the sound of her father’s voice, clear and high. She reached down deep into her belly, scooping up her soul, pouring it palmful by palmful into the room for everyone to hear and to know. Every ounce of soul she had within her she gave up to them. She did it for her father because she loved him, and, as it turned out, love didn’t die just because the ones you loved did.

It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but it was also the easiest—singing the song her father had taught her. It was like surviving, impossible and innate.

A voice filled the restaurant. She didn’t think it was hers ( _since when did she sound like that?_ ). It seemed to come from a far-off place, the disembodied cry of a fallen angel.

“ _You're just too good to be true... Can't take my eyes off you..._ ”

Under the warmth of the lights she could feel her father’s arms wrapping around her shoulders, sheltering her from the ugliness of the city around her. No one else had ever made her feel that safe. Other people were derelict, others homeless—but not her, never her.

“ _You’d be like heaven to touch… I wanna hold you so much..._ ”

But there was no heaven, not really. There was only this, the here and now, the people we have within our grasp—or those we wish we did. Without her father’s arms she felt how homeless she truly was. Building walls around herself hadn’t given her any shelter, only the illusion of it.

“ _At long last love has arrived... and I thank god I’m alive..._ ”

She choked up on the word ‘god’ and opened her eyes, letting them drift up to the balcony. She started singing to the man she saw there, mixing the truth with a lie to try to hide her heart—to keep it somewhere safe, somewhere he couldn’t hurt it. But the truth, if she’d been brave enough to say it openly, was that love was worthless without hope, and that life was worthless without love. And she had no hope of him.

“ _You’re just too good to be true… Can’t take my eyes off you..._ ”

His eyes were riveted on her, and from where she stood on the counter, beneath the lights, she thought he looked pale, like he’d been stricken by some terrifying, sublime thought. She stared at him and he stared back, the rest of the room, the city, the world, the galaxy itself, spinning farther and farther away. Gravity anchored them to each other as the stars around them disappeared, swallowed by a darkness that couldn’t touch them.

“ _Pardon the way that I stare… There’s nothing else to compare..._ ”

She tore her eyes away from him, even though it hurt to look away—like it was some act of violence against herself—but what choice did she have? Because of course they weren’t the only people in the universe—she wasn’t even the only woman for him in the room—and nothing held them together except her wasted wish that he would be as good as he was beautiful.

“ _The sight of you leaves me weak… There are no words left to speak..._ ”

She looked around the restaurant, at all the rapt and silent faces staring at her, but if there was another man alive who could make her scour the streets, scanning the faces of strangers and the backs of anonymous nobodies to find him, she had yet to meet that man.

“ _But if you feel like I feel…_ ”

Had he ever been lonely a day in his life? She rasped the words, tired of being so lonely she bled out from her lungs.

“ _Please let me know that it’s real..._ ”

She began to pace along the counter, but instead of walking away from him like she’d planned, her feet, her traitor feet—led by her heart and her soul and her gut—took her toward him.

“ _You’re just too good to be true…_ ”

Her body moved of its own accord, and she sank to her knees, her legs moving until her feet were touching the floor. When her eyes found him again, like she knew they would, she began to sing to him. His body responded, turning in the booth so that both his legs jutted out over the side of the bench, squarely facing her. They stayed rooted like that, facing each other, as she sang.

“ _Can’t take my eyes off you..._ ”

She could feel her father singing along with her and every person that had ever passed through the city, every hope and dream that had ever lived in this patchwork of gridded streets, wending their way around the towering skyscrapers before disappearing into the sky like smoke.

The sound of the horn section swelled as the song opened up to the chorus, and she began to sing so passionately it came out a cry, her voice rasping as she reached inside herself, hollowing herself out with every note for him.

“ _I love you, baby... And if it’s quite all right... I need you, baby, to warm the lonely night..._ ”

She ripped opened her chest to expose her beating heart, a vulnerable, injured, scarred thing, but not dead—no—still passionate and alive and bleeding—for him, for something, for someone, for love. The sound of hands clapping to the beat filled the restaurant, customers led by the servers, people of all ages—blue-haired old women and raven-haired toddlers, hairy-knuckled Sasquatches and big-chested blondes—but one person didn’t clap along with the rest. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and covered his mouth with his hands.

“ _I love you, baby... Trust in me when I say…_ ”

She pressed a fist to her stomach, her shoulders swaying back and forth to the beat of the song, and she closed her eyes for a moment so she wouldn’t have to witness the naked emotion reflected back in his. He looked shocked and shaken— _had she done that to him?_ —and with every word out of her mouth he seemed to draw closer and closer.

“ _Oh, pretty baby... Don’t bring me down I pray..._ ”

Her knees threatened to buckle under the weight of everything she carried inside her, and she took a half-step back and leaned against the counter, imagining that she was lying in bed, snuggled in a nest of limbs and naked skin with the man she wanted to love. Maybe she could make him love her back, maybe she could try...

“ _Oh, pretty baby… Now that I’ve found you, stay..._ ”

He nodded almost imperceptibly at her, as if to say she was welcome to try, although he may have only been nodding in time to the tune. At that moment the blonde put her left hand on his shoulder from behind and squeezed, the motion of her hand catching the lights above her. The diamond on her ring finger sparkled down at Katniss.

“ _And let me love you, baby… Let me love you..._ ”

He turned his head toward the blonde, leaning in to listen to something she had to tell him, and then slid out of the booth, allowing her to get out and head toward the stairs. Katniss didn’t look back into the balcony to see if Rye had resumed watching her sing. She couldn’t. The only thing left for her to do was get through it and carry on, like she always had.

The blonde was wearing an engagement ring.

The pieces began to fall in place—the boy with Rye in the bakery, how they seemed like a family, their ease with each other and sense of belonging.

Rye was going to marry her.

He was sleeping with half of New York City behind her back, but he was going to marry her.

What kind of man would do that?

She finished the song in a daze, the revulsion, anger, and disappointment she felt gripping at her intestines, twisting and pulling them in every direction, and she poured those feelings into the song, too. She didn’t care who clapped for her or who didn’t or what anyone thought of her anymore—she survived, and that was enough.

The song faded out, and as the music died the restaurant grew as silent as the grave her father’s body was buried in. She stood there, breathless and weak, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.

Out on the street, a bus came to a halt, its worn out brakes screeching in protest, the driver laying on the horn. Someone inside the restaurant took this as a sign from the universe to carry on, and they began to clap. Soon, the noise from within the restaurant was deafening, a cacophony of applause and hooting and cheering.

She made a record amount of tips for the performance—money she sorely needed but had to pass along to Cato. Overhead, she saw Cato worm his way through the crowded balcony, collecting money in his cup, a shit-eating grin on his face as wadded up bills were stuffed into it by enthusiastic diners.

As she collected tips on the main level, the customers heaped praise on her, shoving bills into her waist apron as she passed them. She kept a smile plastered dumbly onto her face, their words falling upon her deaf ears, as she internally picked at the open scabs on her heart.

“You’ll be a star,” one woman told her.

“That was breathtaking,” said another.

“Wanna meet up for drinks later or something?” asked a third.

The men were equally as exuberant, if a bit handsier. But she didn’t notice any of it, didn’t care, didn’t even bother swatting the rogue hands away.

Rye was going to marry the blonde.

Why would he bring her here? Is that what he had wanted to talk to her about in the laundry room? Maybe they had an arrangement like Jo and Blight, an agreement to have some kind of open relationship. But did people do that when there were kids involved? Or was he simply burning through his not-so-little black book before their wedding?

After making the rounds on the main level, she reluctantly made her way back over to the stairs and up to her section. It could only be avoided so long, and, besides, she needed to hustle to earn some kind of tip money tonight. Because there was one thing Katniss was dead set on, and it was that there was no way on god’s green earth that she was going to accept a dime of _his_ money. Not for a tip and not for the bill. It wasn’t like she could really afford to spring for their check, but she knew she couldn’t afford owing a man like him anything. His money was no better than blood money, earned by spilling the tears of unicorns and looting gold from the ends of rainbows. She wanted no part of it, or him.

By the time she finally made her way back to Rye’s table, Jopa was floating up to his eyeballs in milkshake and deep in the throes of a sugar coma. His head lolled against the back of the booth, his hand resting on the miniscule bulge of his tummy.

“How was everything,” Katniss said in a toneless voice, looking down at her notepad as she scribbled “no charge” on their bill so that she wouldn’t have to look at Rye or his fiancee.

“It was perfect,” Rye said. His voice was so soft she wanted to wrap herself in it.

She tugged at the hem of her skirt and shifted on her feet, uncomfortable about the part of herself that couldn’t help wanting that.

When she composed herself enough to make eye contact with him, he was smiling at her—the small, knowing expression he sometimes got that made her feel like he knew exactly how uncomfortable she was around him.

“Is there anything else I can get for you tonight?”

“Um...” he hesitated, considering what ought to be a fairly straightforward question. “No? Guys, we’re all set, right?” He glanced at Jopa and the blonde, who both nodded and smiled sweetly in agreement. If Katniss didn’t know better, she’d almost think their smiles were encouraging. “Just the check, I think,” he said.

He shifted his weight to reach into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, opening the bi-fold to pull out a credit card. While his fingers fumbled to slide one out—he seemed to be struggling with it for some reason—she tore the slip off her notepad and placed it face down on the table.

He slid one of his credit cards across the table toward her without looking at the check, his thick fingers covering all of the plastic except for the second half of his last name.

She looked down at his hand on the card and scowled, moving her own away as quickly as she could so that they didn’t accidentally touch each other. It didn’t matter—the sparks between them still found their way to her, warming her fingers and traveling through her hand, spreading up her arm and then down her spine, diffusing throughout her body to the most inappropriate and unwelcome of places.

“It’s on the house.”

“What?” His forehead wrinkled, clearly not understanding.

“I said it’s _on the house_.”

“Yeah…. I mean, I got that part,” he replied, searching her face like he was going to find the answer written across it. “But why?”

Katniss shrugged and went for the most innocuous answer. “Now we’re even.”

Rye laughed and nudged his credit card closer to her. “But who’s keeping score?” He pulled his hand away, leaving his card on the table, and exhaled loudly, drumming his fingers on his knee. “Come on,” he said gently, nodding toward his card. “I insist. I _want_ to pay. And it’s not the same as free bagels. You don’t own this place. You shouldn’t have to pay for me, much less three of us.”

No, she _shouldn’t_ have to pay. She agreed with him on that much, but she bit back the retort. Life was nothing if not having to pay for things that were unfairly dropped on your lap.

They were locked in a stalemate, then, with Katniss refusing to accept the payment that Rye insisted on making. She didn’t understand why he was making this difficult for her or why he was so adamant about footing the bill. Wouldn’t most people be thrilled to have someone pick up the tab for them? Must be some macho bullshit on his part to impress his fiancee.

Jopa piped in out of nowhere, apropos of nothing, and chirped, “Rye’s not my big brother!”

“Juan Pablo!” the blonde interjected, drumming her hand lightly on the table and shooting him a meaningful look. “It’s not polite to interrupt. Let the two of them work it out,” she added in a soft voice.

It was then that Katniss noticed it on Marilyn’s hand—not just an engagement ring. A wedding band too.

The blonde was _married_. Katniss glanced down at Rye’s left hand, resting on one of his restless legs, but it confirmed what she already knew—what she’d looked for that very first morning when she’d seen him pushing his sofa through the door to his new apartment—he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

Katniss frowned as she tried to process this new information, but Rye started speaking again, urging her to let him pay, and it was making it impossible for her to think. “No, really…” He paused before saying her name, looking discomfited, “Katniss, I _want_ you to take my card. Charge me for the desserts. Go on.”

As Rye urged her to let him pay, a loud, booming voice caught her attention from the top of the stairs. Plutarch. Her overlord and, at present, savior. He had made his way to the balcony and was headed toward her, making his rounds among her customers, going table by table, to see how they were enjoying their dinners.

An idea came to her on how to resolve the situation with Rye and get him out of her restaurant. She raised her voice and spoke loudly so that she’d be overhead over the din, hoping that her acting was passable enough to pull this off. “I’m _so_ sorry, sir, that one of my hairs got in your sundae. I feel _terrible_ about that. That’s _disgusting_ and _unsanitary_. Here, let me take that for you.”

“Wait—what? What are you talking ab—” he began to ask, frowning in confusion, but he didn’t have the chance to finish speaking before she reached over and grabbed the empty parfait glass, deliberately knocking over his half-empty water glass in the process. The water that was left in it spilled out, soaking the bill and credit card and pooling over the edge of the table and onto his lap.

Life, meet lap.

Rye lept up and began to shear the cold water off the front of his shorts before it could soak into the fabric. Katniss’ breath caught as his hand lightly brushed over his crotch and down to his thighs—there was no mistaking, through the wet fabric, that he had a sizable bulge to match his outsized libido. As his hands brushed the water off his thighs, his frown deepened, understanding dawning on his face about what she had done.

“Oh my _god_. Clumsy me! I am _so_ sorry!” she exclaimed, hearing how disingenuous she sounded. She winced, hoping she hadn’t blown her plan with a couple poorly delivered lines, but when she glanced up and saw Plutarch briskly walking toward them, a concerned expression on his face, she bit back a smile of satisfaction. Hook, line, and sinker.

“I am so, so sorry about the water, sir!” She reached across the table and grabbed a wad of napkins from their dispenser, thrusting them into his hands. “Here,” she said, pulling her hands back as quickly as she could and wiping them on the sides of her uniforms to try to rub away the sensation of his warm skin brushing against hers.

“What seems to be the matter over here?” Plutarch’s voice was a booming, violent thing, as sudden and shocking as a cannon firing into a dark night. The sound of it drew the furtive glances of other patrons, whose interest was piqued by the promise of a good show—the bloodier, the better.

Rye dropped the wad of sodden napkins onto the table and held his hands up in a placating gesture. “It’s alright,” he said with a smile. “Really. She’s just teaching me how to swim.”

Jopa and the blonde laughed, drawing Plutarch’s interest for a moment as he assessed the damage of the situation. He raised his eyebrows on his cartoonishly square-shaped face—they were bushy, fuzzy things that reminded Katniss of caterpillars inching fruitlessly along a sidewalk, never destined to reach the place they ought to be.

“I can see that—I’m very sorry about the spill. And,” he said with a grave tone Katniss knew to be feigned but that always worked its magic on the customers, “I also understand that your food was not to your satisfaction.” ( _That was his favorite euphemism for when customers couldn’t stomach whatever nasty shit they’d been given_ ).

“No—” Rye began to argue, but Plutarch took it as a verdict and barreled ahead, a frightening steam train that had built up too much momentum to do anything but stay chugging along on track.

“Let me make this right, sir. We value our customer’s experience here at the Stardust Diner, and we’d like to see you come back. Your food is complimentary tonight. And can I bring you something else, perhaps another dessert, or some coffee? Some merchandise from the diner—we have some t-shirts and coffee mugs.”

Leave it to Plutarch to try to turn a PR debacle into a marketing opportunity.

“No,” Rye objected, “that’s really not necess—”

“Say no more. I’ll take care of this personally.” Plutarch turned his beady eyes to Katniss. “As for you… You know what I said earlier about what would happen if you made another careless mistake like this. There has to be consequences, Katniss.”

She lifted her chin at the rebuke, waiting for him to say the words. Rye had already cost her enough tonight—what was her money, on top of that? She’d already written it off as a loss.

“I’m going to have to dock your wages to cover the bill,” Plutarch said, more for Rye’s benefit than anything else.

“That’s not right. I really can’t have you do that,” Rye interrupted, looking sick to his stomach. He gestured to Jopa and the blonde. “We’ve had a great time tonight. And this—” he looked down toward his wet crotch, “will dry within ten seconds of walking on the street. It’s like a blast furnace out there.” His blue eyes met Katniss’, and they pleaded with her to hear him. “I didn’t come here for free food.” He picked up his credit card and offered it to her, but she refused to look at it, crossing her arms instead.

He huffed impatiently and looked at Plutarch, trying a different tack. “She works too hard… She—she’s got to be exhausted.” He looked down toward the lunch counter, where the Legs were getting ready to perform, and stammered out, “—I don’t know what you’re paying them to do all this, but it looks like such hard work, and it’s expensive, living in the city, and she’s trying to make it... and I wouldn’t feel right taking anything from her…”

With every word bumbled out of his mouth Katniss’ hackles rose higher and higher.

Because it sounded an awful lot like pity to her, and that was the one, final insult she could not take from him—to be _pitied_ like some Little Orphan Annie rummaging in trash bins for scraps of food. The thought made her seethe. If Plutarch wasn’t standing next to them she’d launch herself at Rye and shove him against the damned wall.

She snapped, hissing at him through clenched teeth. “I don’t need any favors. I don’t want _anything_ from you. I don’t want your sympathy or charity or—or— _friendship_. I don’t want to see you in here again. I just want you to get out of here and... Leave. Me. Alone.” She choked out the last three words, ashamed in herself at close she was to crying.

Rye looked like she’d just struck him, his face growing ashen at her words. _Finally_. She’d finally hit her mark. He finally understood that she wasn’t interested in playing fucked up games.

“I’m so sorry, Katniss… I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “I didn’t come here to do that. I just wanted to—”

“I need you to take your apron off and go home,” Plutarch interrupted, speaking to Katniss with a tone that brooked no argument.

The panic welled up in her, threatening to spill over. She needed this job, or she’d lose what little she had. “Am I fired?”

“No.” Plutarch scratched at the side of his bulbous nose with one of his baby carrot-shaped fingers. “But I can’t have you being rude to the customers. So leave. Go home.” He nodded toward the front door. “And when I see you again in a couple days, I expect you to bring an entirely new attitude with you.”

“Fine.” Katniss reached inside her apron and handed Plutarch the microphone, then loosened her apron and took it off, wadding it into her hands as tightly as she could, not even caring if she lost the bills and change tucked inside its pockets. “I’ll go.”

She turned and walked away, pausing when she reached the top of the stairs. For some reason she turned her head to look back at him, already regretting she’d lost her temper. It could have cost her her job—but she felt like it could have cost her something more. He was still standing there, looking at her, his arms dangling uselessly at his sides.

He looked a bit lost, an inscrutable expression on his face.

She hated that she wanted to know what he was thinking.

Katniss made her way through the crowded diner and out onto the steamy sidewalk, dodging and winding her way around the groups of tourists who stood dumbstruck on the pavement. As she disappeared into the jungle of the city, she wished that whatever cord connected her to Rye, whatever affinity or attraction to one another they shared, would snap—and then she wouldn’t have to feel as though he were walking alongside her every step of the way.

* * *

 

_I’ll be ready to go in 15_.

She refrained from adding: _Despite the fact I’d rather curl up and die_.

Katniss tucked her cell phone into her armpit so she could use both hands to jiggle the key in the lock, pushing the swollen wood of her apartment’s front door open with her left hip and nearly falling down as it swung open. In the humid air everything, including the walls of her apartment itself, was uncomfortable and out of sorts. The door was too large for its frame, the walls perspired something that smelled vaguely of stewed cabbage and sun-baked trash, and her refrigerator groaned from constantly working to cool the only thing inside of it, a half-gallon of curdling milk. She felt as bent out of shape, stinky, and soured as all of it combined.

When her phone vibrated against the sticky skin of her arm she checked Jo’s reply: _Perfect. That’s my ETA. The A was a little bitch tonight. It was ten mins late. The ducking piece of shit_.

For a second, she considered begging out of hanging out. She could just as easily hand off Jo’s purse or drop it off at her apartment tomorrow. But the revelation of Marilyn’s wedding ring and the other horrors of tonight were so fresh in her mind she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she picked someone’s brains about them over a beer (or half a dozen)—and who better than Jo, who had the uncanny knack for cutting right to the meat of an issue? Besides, she was already on the subway ride over.

She texted back: _Take your time. Not like I’m going anywhere. Let yourself in_.

Tossing her phone onto her couch along with her purse and apron, she kicked off her sneakers and walked into her bathroom, eager to wash off the day’s accumulation of sweat and grease. She peeled off her uniform and underwear and stepped into the shower before the water had a chance to heat up—the icy water on her skin felt like its own kind of orgasm, refreshing and invigorating. It cleared her mind at least somewhat—enough to chew on what she had really observed tonight at the diner.

As she sudsed up her hair, she speculated on what was going on between Rye and the blonde. Was he having an affair with a married woman? She wouldn’t put anything past him, but then surely Jopa’s father would know about Rye through the boy. His relationship with Jopa meant it couldn’t be a one night stand or something hush-hush.

And as for Jopa—what did he mean about Rye not being his big brother? Unless… _yes_. That was it. He must have meant he wasn’t his _Big Brother_. She’d assumed at the bakery that Rye must have been assigned to him through the organization. Somehow Rye must have known this—maybe making that guess because she had seen his mail—and perhaps they’d even had a good yuck at her expense about it.

Katniss watched the suds cascade down her body and down the drain, and the epiphany washed over her along with them. Rye wasn’t Jopa’s Big Brother, or any other kind of brother to the boy. And he wasn’t having an affair with his mother either.

The only thing that made sense—and suddenly _everything_ made sense, every random woman he brought home and fucked and never saw again, why he made a point never to learn their names, why he’d moved next door into a working-class neighborhood and couldn’t sleep at night, why he loved the boy as if he were his own—was that he was Jopa’s father. If not by blood, then through adoption. And this woman— _Del_ —was his estranged wife.

Rye was a man whose marriage had fallen apart and who, for whatever reason, was fucking his way through New York City to forget the woman who had been sitting by his side.

She thought of the woman’s tender touches, her kindness and generosity of spirit, and Katniss couldn’t help but judge her neighbor for throwing away a perfectly good home.

Some people would kill for that.

She’d rather think almost anything else of Rye Mellark. Maybe it was a failing of understanding on her part, some gross prejudice born from the shards of her own shattered life, but after having lost her father, the best sort of man that had ever lived, she could think of nothing worse than a husband who would choose to walk away from his wife and child in order to get wasted and fuck different women every night.

It was possible there was some rational explanation for why their marriage had fallen apart. Maybe that’s what he had wanted to talk to her about and to explain.

But he’d been right, back in the restaurant. She _was_ exhausted—of her life and of his uncanny ability to derail her as she tried to live it.

Mindful of the time, Katniss turned off the water and toweled off, running a brush roughly through her gnarled hair, carelessly ripping at the tangles. She plaited it into a simple braid to keep it off her neck and then went through an abridged version of her beauty routine, opting only to brush her teeth and put on some moisturizer. Whatever makeup she put on was destined to sweat off within minutes anyway.

She’d just opened her closet to decide on what to wear when the knocking at her apartment door began. The first knock was tentative and uncertain, but the second that followed it only seconds later was louder and more determined.

Grabbing the first thing she could find—a chiffon dress with spaghetti straps Cressida had talked her into buying “in case,” she’d explained in a condescending tone, “you ever want to get laid again”—she threw it on so she wouldn’t have to answer the door in her towel.

The gauzy fabric of the dress hadn’t even fallen into place over her hips when there was a third knock—even louder this time, and decidedly tinged with a touch of impatience.

“What the _actual_ fuck, Jo,” Katniss called out loudly enough to be heard through the door, stepping into a pair of panties she’d randomly pulled from her top drawer. “I said to let yourself in. Or did you lose the key I gave you? Because, if you did, I will kill you.”

As she stalked the few steps to the front door, there was a fourth knock—or a series of them, rather—this time set to the rhythm of “Shave and a Haircut.” Jo had obviously heard her storming around and had decided to annoy the shit out her while waiting for her to answer.

“Jo, I said I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming, I’m—”

She swung the door open and sputtered out, “Coming.” Her voice faltered on the word.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been told that, she knew.

“Oh. You’re not Jo,” she said dumbly, standing six agonizing inches away from _him_.

“No,” Rye said, jamming his hands in the pockets of his shorts. He was right—they were already dry on the front.

She swallowed noisily as her eyes made their way from his groin back up to his face. She hoped he couldn't hear her traitor throat.

His Adam’s apple bobbed like he was laboring to speak, and when he finally did she was surprised by how resigned he sounded. “No, I’m not Joe,” he said. He tugged his Mets cap off his head with one hand and ran his other through his hair. One stubborn wave insisted on standing straight up.

_He looks a disheveled mess_ , Katniss thought. _An absolutely perfect mess_.

Rye shook his head, a look of determination coming across his flushed face, and he crossed his arms to match her posture. He looked as defensive as she felt.

He opened his mouth and spoke again, and this time his words made no sense at all.

“But I’m not Rye either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains lyrics from “Mack The Knife,” as performed by Bobby Darin (lyrics by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht), “You’re The One That I Want” by John Travolta and Olivia Newton John (lyrics by John Farrar), “Sweet Talkin’ Guy” by The Chiffons (written by Doug Morris and Robert Schwartz) and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli (written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio). 
> 
> As a bit of trivia, Bobby Darin was born and raised in East Harlem (NYC); John Travolta hails from Englewood, NJ; the Chiffons were all from the Bronx (NYC); and Frankie Valli, quite famously, is a Jersey Boy... But who’s keeping score? ;)
> 
> If you've enjoyed this chapter, don't be shy! Drop me a note. Or come find me on tumblr. I love hearing from people. Thanks so much for reading... I promise not to keep you hanging too long on the next chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, there’s one more (smutty) chapter before the (smutty) epilogue. Whoops. Hopefully folks are okay with that. Contains direct and revised quotes from The Hunger Games books and films, none of which I own. 
> 
> With thanks, as always, to my betas and dear friends dandelion-sunset, jennagill, eala-musings, pookieh, and everlylark. Thank you for always supporting and pushing me. All remaining errors are mine.
> 
> This chapter is for @jennywren0. May Peeta Mellark always win the war of attrition on Katniss Everdeen’s heart. And to everyone who has been struggling the past few weeks: hold onto hope. And refuse to let it go. <3c
> 
> If you’ve been enjoying this story, send me a note! I’d love to hear from you. You can also find me on tumblr as papofglencoe.

 

“ _Lovingly to hope all things is the opposite of despairingly to hope nothing at all. Love hopes all things– yet is never put to shame. To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of the good is to hope. To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of evil is to fear. By the decision to choose hope one decides infinitely more than it seems, because it is an eternal decision._ ”  

- _Søren Kierkegaard_

* * *

 

The city was stunned into silence.

Traffic came to a halt on the West Side Highway, an endless line of cars filled with drivers whose white-knuckled hands were peeled around their steering wheels, eyes riveted to their windshields, searching ahead for answers. The engines on the Staten Island ferry suddenly cut out, its passengers peering northward past Battery Park and the golden, glittering lights of downtown, trying to catch a glimpse of a certain ramshackle apartment building in Inwood. The skaters beneath the Hamilton Bridge popped up their boards and tucked them under their arms to gawk in the direction of the olive-skinned girl standing in the doorway of Apt. 449, her arms crossed and smoke billowing out of her ears like the overworked smokestacks of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. And the laboring mothers at New York Presbyterian bore down, and, while they couldn’t quite find it in themselves to care what some random man in a Mets cap had just said, they bit their fists to muffle the sounds of their whimpers and screams so that the rest of the city could listen in.

The whole of Manhattan was silent except for Katniss Everdeen, who promptly began to laugh in Rye Mellark’s face.

“Well, _that’s_ one I haven’t heard before. Next you’re going to tell me it’s not Rye—because it’s _Ryan_. Or—gasp!—maybe your name is Bruce Wayne.” She took half a step back and clutched the edge of the door, preparing to shut it in his face. “I know exactly who you are. I’ve seen your mail—remember, Mr. Columbia?” She tapped her foot on her welcome mat to draw his attention to it, her big toe landing squarely in the center of the ‘ _O_ ’ of ‘ _GTFO_.’ “Now what part of ‘get the fuck out’ didn’t you understand?”

“Okay.” He nodded and took a deep breath. “I think I deserved that, but not for the reason you think.”

She arched an eyebrow and glared at him defiantly, surprised by how bold she felt. “Reason, _singular_? Who said it was just the one?”

Rye bit the inside of his cheek and jammed his hat back onto his head, crossing his arms again so that his fingers were tucked into his armpits, except for his thumbs, both of which rested on his pecs. A muscle in one of his thumbs spasmed infinitesimally— she would have missed it if she hadn’t been staring at the way his shirt stretched over his muscles. Katniss forced her eyes upward to meet his gaze instead of ogling the way his stupid, tight shirt fit over his stupid, broad chest. ( _How impossibly stupid_ , she wondered, _could one human be_?)

The right corner of his mouth hitched up in a rueful smile. “Turns out this isn’t as humorous as I thought it was going to be.”

“Wait.” She rubbed her forehead with one hand, trying to massage away the sharp, sudden ache she felt at his words, knowing it wouldn’t work because she hurt absolutely everywhere. “You thought harassing me at work was going to be funny? You thought showing up here... like _this_... was going to be _funny_?” She spluttered out the last word incredulously.

“No—that’s not what I—no.” He shook his head adamantly, his bright blue eyes flashing intensely.

Katniss gripped the edge of the door harder, her fingernails pressing so hard to the wood she could feel them sink into the grain.

“Look,” Rye said, sounding impatient or urgent or—something Katniss couldn’t discern. “There’s something you need to know about me.”

She huffed out a harsh laugh. “Ha! What could I possibly need to know about you that I don’t already?”

He shook his head like the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. “That when it comes to you, I’m a total idiot.”

Katniss fell silent, struck dumb by the sincerity and self-deprecation she heard in his voice. She hadn’t been expecting that.

Rye took the opportunity to press on. “I came to the diner tonight to do something I should have done on day one.” He crossed his arms tighter, like he was trying to curl up inside of himself and disappear. The action made his biceps flex—the sight was a strange contradiction of vulnerability and strength. “I saw you, you know... a couple days after I moved in. You were on your way to work, wearing your uniform and—” he cleared his throat. “—And anyway. I should have just gone out and introduced myself. But I didn’t, and then the next morning I saw you in the elevator, and I tried to talk to you, but I was so tired, and then that woman—that woman wasn’t wearing any underwear, and she was leaning there against the wall all…” He pulled a face, splaying his arms in a “V” to imitate Glimmer the Groaner’s wide open legs. “And it was so uncomfortable. And you’re—fuck—you’re _really_ intimidating, you know that?” He exhaled, sounding shaken. “I’m not normally like this... just a complete fucking idiot, but you have no idea, the effect—”

She cut him off, having heard more than enough of his rambling excuses. “‘That woman,’ huh? Nice. I bet that’s how you refer to all the women you sleep with.”

“I didn’t sleep with her,” he said, shaking his head and having the audacity to look at her innocently. “I couldn’t even sleep in the same apartment as her. That was one of the longest nights of my life—and I’ve had a few. Trust me.”

Katniss rolled her eyes. _There_ was the macho posturing she’d expected out of him, bragging about his stamina. “Fine. We can argue semantics. Is that how you refer to all the women you’ve _fucked_?” She spat out the word, looking at his mouth so she wouldn’t fall into his cavernous pupils. “Does that work better for you?”

“I didn’t _fuck_ her either,” Rye said, keeping Katniss’ emphasis on the word. He pawed at his chin with one hand, the skin of his palm scratching noisily over the sandy brown stubble that had grown in during the course of the day—an abrasive sound that matched his words.

Katniss thought she could hear dogs howling in the distance, two lovelorn mutts searching for each other in the night. _Pointless. They’d never find each other in this place_. She moved to shut the door.

“No, wait,” he begged, his entire body tensing and shifting toward her—no more than a fraction of an inch, but it was one that made her feel like she’d been invaded by a conquering horde. “I know you’re expecting Joe, but give me—” He fumbled for a second in his pocket and pulled out his phone, pressing the home button to look at the time. “—Give me until 9:17 to explain. That’s two minutes.” He held up his hands in surrender. “And if you still want me to fuck off, I’ll never say a word to you again.”

“Why do you care?” Katniss narrowed her eyes, partly out of suspicion and partly because the look of hope that had dawned on his face as she spoke was as radiant as the sun. He looked like light itself, and the brightness of him made her want to crawl away, back into the darkness where she lived like the abject creature she was.

“Is that a yes?”

Katniss let out a disgruntled sound, aggravated at herself for caving. But her options were limited. As far as she could tell, she could either agree to it or spend that time arguing with him about it. “Fine. Two minutes.” With any luck, Johanna would show up in that time anyway. Her hand dropped from the doorframe, and, because she didn’t know what to do with it, she put her hand on her hip. _There. That looks determined enough. I think_. “Then I never want to hear another word out of your mouth.”

“I can work with that,” he said with a smile. “Hold on.” He unlocked his phone and began to type intently with one hand, his face illuminated by the glow of the screen. As he typed something out he bit his lip, frowning in concentration. _I bet that’s the same face he makes when he’s getting blown_.

She didn’t know what aggravated her more—how her mind immediately jumped to that thought or how she was standing around with her thumb up her ass waiting for him to do... whatever the fuck he was doing.

She huffed. “You’re shitting me, right?”

“Hold on juuuuuust one sec…” he murmured distractedly, holding the thick index finger of his left hand up between the two of them.

She was tempted to bite the fucking thing to get it out of her personal space. “Fine,” she grumbled. “The less I have to listen to out of you, the better.”

He finished whatever he’d been doing and locked his phone, dropping it back into his pocket with a self-satisfied flourish. “There.”

As he looked up at her, he gave her a small smile. At this distance Katniss felt like she was all eyes and limbs and skin—she wasn’t sure what to look at, how to stand, what to do with herself. She felt like _too much_ —and like he was too much too—and that together they were burning up all the oxygen in the hallway. There would be nothing left to breathe if they kept standing together, so close, like this, sharing each other’s air. Uncomfortable didn’t begin to do the feeling justice. It was _hellfire_.

She had to get away. Two minutes had somehow morphed into two centuries, the years slowly dragging on as she looked into his eyes.

Rye swallowed, and she watched the column of his throat at work. He was like art. Despicable, profane art best thrown onto a heap and burned, lest he corrupt the world with the radical thoughts he inspired. She thought about standing in front of the bonfire and feeling the flames lick her face, and she flushed as though they were really touching her, like he was touching her as he writhed and turned to ash, burning her up with him.

After several decades of staring at each other he finally spoke. In the epoch that had passed she had forgotten how gentle his voice was. “I’m so sorry about the diner tonight. I didn’t mean to upset you or get you in trouble. I got an idea—a terrible idea, it turns out—that involved me actually paying for the food I ordered.”

“And the food your kid and wife—or whatever she is—ordered too,” she shot back.

At her words Rye frowned, shaking his head as though she’d started speaking in Hebrew to him. “Wife? Now you think I’m married? Wha—no. I’ve never been married a day in my life, and as for Juan Pa—.”

She interjected, “Well, it’s _someone’s_ wife you’re sleeping with—”

This time he was the one to interrupt her, cutting her off before she could finish. He looked squeamish, his mouth screwing up as though he’d taken a swig of cheap gin and was trying to act like it didn’t taste like toilet water. “Oh god. Is that really what you think of me? No wonder you looked like you wanted to spit in my food. Look, it’s not like that with Delly and me. _At all_. She’s practically—”

The sound of a door opening down the hall caught his attention, and he broke off speaking and looked to his right, a grin making its way onto his face at whatever—or whoever—he saw. Katniss’ eyes followed his because, although there was no way it was possible, it sounded like the opening door had been close—really close—as in: next-door close.

It sounded exactly like someone stepping out of Rye’s apartment.

_Maybe Delly had been in there_ —she began to think, and then all thought and reason abandoned her.

Because when she looked, there he was. Standing half-naked in the doorway of Apt. 451, a white terry cloth towel slung low around his hips, his wavy blond hair, still wet, pushed back off his forehead, beads of water dripping down his scarlet, sun-crisped shoulders. He held the towel carelessly with one hand, almost goading it to drop.

There were two of _him_.

Except one wasn’t him at all. One was all wrong: too lean, too sharp, too cold, too… remote. Like an ice field on a mountain. The details were all off—or perhaps they were missing altogether, a composite of blanks and gaps. He was a forgery in a world full of fakes. A _not-Rye_ version of Rye Mellark.

The not-Rye began to speak, and his voice was different from Rye’s too. Raspier. Harsher. Katniss resisted the urge to shudder at the sound. She knew that voice. “Whatever you want, bro, this better be good. I gotta finish getting ready, and I told whatshername—” he looked at the cell phone he held in his free hand in order to check his messages. “Tha-li-a…,” he pronounced the woman’s name slowly as he read it, repeating it once under his breath as though to commit it to memory, “that I’d meet her in Soho at 9:30. And we already know _that_ shit’s not happening.”

As the man spoke, language began to return to Katniss in bits and pieces. Letters found companions and formed syllables, and syllables found mates to become words. And somehow she managed to string a few together to form a thing she once called a sentence.

“Who—who is that?” she whispered to the man she knew, the one standing next to her, the one she had spoken to multiple times but until now had never really _seen_ —but of course she already knew the answer.

She’d seen the half-naked man before, naturally. With his fingers in Glimmer the Groaner’s panties or tasting the sweet smoke curling out of Clove’s mouth. She’d seen him with red welts on his wrists as he took out the trash, and she’d seen him talking trash in the park playing basketball. She knew intimate details about the man—the sounds he made as his body was wracked by an orgasm and what he liked to say to a woman in bed.

As it turns out, she even knew his name.

Then she glanced at the man in the Mets cap for as long as her cowardly heart dared—the two men strongly favored each other in appearance. There was no denying they were brothers. They could almost pass as twins, but next to each other they were so clearly, painfully, _obviously_ two different men. Shame and embarrassment began to pulsate throughout her body, rushing and pooling under the surface of her skin, heating her and splashing angry red splotches across her skin from her chest to her face.

This was what it was like, wanting to die from shame.

If someone was the idiot here—if someone was impossibly stupid—it wasn’t... whatever his name was.

She turned her eyes to the half-naked man, who appraised her impassively for a second and then looked at his brother. He smirked and nodded once in her direction without giving her a second look. “So this is the girl next door, huh?”

“Ah—yeah. Yep. She is,” the guy formerly known as Rye said, clawing at his neck. The skin there had gotten so red it looked painful to the touch. His obvious embarrassment somehow lessened hers. “This is Katniss,” he added. It could have been an introduction, but it sounded more like an explanation.

_He’s mentioned me to everyone. Haymitch the Hobo. His friends from the bar. That little boy, for crying out loud. And a ghost I never even knew existed_. Katniss’ heart began to race, and she knew it wasn’t only from mortification. She’d been so blind, all along, seeing the things she wanted to believe and nothing more. What else had she been wrong about?

_Everything_.

Maybe she had been wrong about everything, from the name of the man in the Mets cap to what he wanted from her in the first place.

“Good to meet you,” the half-naked man said. He closed the distance between them in a few steps and used the hand that was holding his cell phone to grasp his towel—two fingers precariously hooked around the fabric were all that kept her from a private viewing of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not’s “Most Sexually Active Dick.” He kept his distance, using one leg to lean a bit toward her, and extended his hand in greeting. She reached out to take it and was surprised when she felt absolutely nothing. No repulsion. No anger. No desire. No curiosity or interest. Nothing. He was one in a faceless throng, a person who happened to live next door—and not even the only one at that.

“I’m Rye,” he told her. Like she didn’t already, finally know.

She let go of his hand and tried hard to speak through the cotton clogging her throat. She meant to ask him if his name was Jersey for “El Diablo,” but instead she choked out, “So I’ve heard.”

“Oh yeah, how so?” he laughed, glancing curiously at his brother.

Katniss was about to reply by dishing out one of the perfectly good one-liners she’d squandered on the wrong brother, when the machinery of the elevator behind her began to protest noisily, and the doors groaned open.

She closed her eyes in dread, knowing exactly who was stepping off that elevator and what exactly they would say. As it turns out, sometimes people _did_ expect the Spanish Inquisition—because they were guilty as fuck and had it coming.

“Well-hell-hell, what do we have here?” Jo’s voice sliced through her back like the blade of a sharp axe. As the rubber soles of her friend’s Doc Martens squeaked on the humid tiles, Katniss turned around to face her Inquisitor, who was looking knowingly between her and—the guy whose name she still didn’t know. “Is it just me, or did Mr. Gorbachev finally tear down that wall—” Her voice cut out as Katniss shifted on her feet, allowing Johanna to catch a glimpse of the man in the towel—the real Rye Mellark—who was standing a few feet behind her. “Nooooooo,” she howled gleefully, clapping her hands together so hard that Katniss flinched at the loud, cracking sound.

Her friend’s peals of laughter began to fill the hall. She laughed so hard her shoulders shook and tears filled her eyes. “Please tell me I’m not seeing what I think I am. This is too good, even for you, babe.”

She planted herself directly between Katniss and the guy formerly known as Rye so that, including the real Rye, who stood across from her, they formed a small circle resembling the innermost circle of hell. “Well, I’ll be damned if there isn’t two of you,” she laughed.

“If you want to be technical,” the guy in the Mets hat said, “there’s three of us. But yeah—there’s two of us who live here.”

Johanna squinted her eyes as she nodded, brazenly sizing him up, her characteristically sly smile still etched onto her face. He stood tall under her scrutiny, but Katniss noticed him absentmindedly rubbing his forearm as if to sooth away the discomfort of it. “You’re precious. Can I keep you?” she decided. Then she turned to Katniss and pretended to whisper out of the corner of her mouth, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “What did I tell you about that one? A puppy.”

“Jo, knock it off,” Katniss hissed, wanting more than ever to find a human-sized hole to crawl in. (Scratch that. She wanted a two-person sized hole so she could bring that bitch down with her).

At that, the guy in the Mets cap—the one she used to think was Rye—looked at Katniss with wide eyes. “Wait. _She’s_ Joe?” He smiled broadly and looked down at her friend. “I’ve seen you before. At the bar. You’re one of Katniss’ friends. When she’d mentioned a ‘Joe,’ I thought she meant her boyfriend.”

Johanna smirked, looking like a shark that had caught the scent of bleeding prey and wanted to circle around it before feasting on its flesh. “What? And just because Joe turns out to be a woman you assume we’re not dating? How heteronormative of you.”

“No—,” he stammered, “I—I mean you could be, but I—um…”

Jo laughed and lightly punched his arm. “Relax. I’m fucking with you.”

He looked relieved, but he laughed uncertainly and pointed between them. “So, the two of you aren’t—”

“She wishes,” Jo quipped, rolling her eyes. She looked over at Katniss, standing in the doorway squirming in her brand-new, rust orange dress, and got a look of compassion on her face that she immediately belied with her words. “What I really mean is that she wishes she had a boyfriend. It’s been… a while.” She unabashedly raked her eyes over Rye’s naked chest and then looked to his brother. “Any volunteers to help her out with that?”

“Enough,” Katniss said, cutting Johanna off before she could make things any worse for her. “You guys should ignore her. Seriously.” She hated how weak she sounded now—it made her seem even more pathetic than if she’d said nothing at all and had brushed it off. She tried to ignore Rye’s careless laughter and the embarrassed flush crawling onto his brother’s face. “She’s a sociopath,” she added, hoping it helped her case. Clutching Johanna’s arm, she pulled her toward the doorway. “Come on, let’s go. Lemme get some shoes on.”

Katniss stepped into her apartment to grab Jo’s purse, along with her own, and to slip on some sandals, but her friend staunchly remained in the doorway, hands on her hips.

“So,” Jo drawled, “you’re the one the whole world wants to sleep with?”

Katniss heard one of the brothers begin to protest. And she knew from his voice that it was _him_ , her Rye Mellark, the one she now suspected might be every bit as wonderful as he seemed—a worst-case scenario, given that she’d been a Grade A asshole to him every chance she could get.

“Relax, Pongo.” Jo’s voice was saccharine sweet, all false promises of cuddles and kisses. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“I don’t know about the whole world,” Katniss heard the real Rye interject, bailing out his brother, “but it’s certainly never been a problem for me.”

“Hmm, is that so?” Jo challenged.

Katniss pressed Jo’s purse into the small of her back, hoping to nudge her out of the way so they could leave, but her friend refused to budge.

“Yeah,” Rye said, cocking an eyebrow at Jo. “That’s so.” He crossed his arms, his towel hanging dangerously low on his hips. An invitation and a dare.

Johanna turned around to take her purse, pretending to be totally oblivious to the fact she was standing in the splash zone of a dick that, if the reports through the wall were in any way accurate, was the size and ferocity of an orca. “Just as I thought,” she said, testing the weight of her bag in her hand. “It _was_ laundry day.”

“Um… my clothes thank you?” Katniss reached over to the side table next to the door and grabbed her keys, more eager now than ever to escape for a drink. She’d been so stupid she couldn’t even bear to look at him, even though she could feel his eyes locked on her, boring into her—like he didn’t think she was a bitch at all, like he still had something he wanted to say to her. And she couldn’t fathom that—why, after she had assumed some of the worst things about him, he’d still want to talk to her.

“Look,” Jo said, pulling out her cell phone and checking the time. “I hate to do this to you, Kat, but it turns out I gotta bail on our plans.” She slung her purse around her shoulder, smirking as she spoke. “Something just came up. I gotta meet someone at the Dyckman Bar for a drink. Sorry you got all…” she pointed up and down from Katniss’ freshly washed hair to her dress and metallic sandals, “...gussied up for nothing.”

Jo shot a fleeting look at the man in the Mets cap and strolled toward the elevator, not even bothering to wait for Katniss’ reply. When she reached it she pressed the call button and winked back at Rye.

Katniss stood there dumbfounded in her doorway, unable to comprehend what had taken place. Because, if she didn’t know better, she’d say it seemed an awful lot like her best friend just blew her off to grab a drink with Rye Motherfuckin’ Mellark. And if there was one thing Katniss knew, it was that it wouldn’t only be drinks. No. Jo was going to eat him alive too, possibly conscripting Blight in the game.

Rye had no idea how well and truly fucked he was.

The elevator arrived, and the doors objected as they opened to let Jo on. “Call me tomorrow when you wake up…” she said to Katniss, glancing at the shaggy-haired brother in the Mets cap and smiling. “...Hopefully in the afternoon. Or, you know…” She waved her hand, “Whenever.” She laughed and stepped onto the elevator, leaving what felt like a debris field in her wake—Katniss’ dignity scattered across an expanse as wide as the Atlantic Ocean. She would never be able to recover the wreckage of her life after this—it was lost to a capricious tide, floating halfway between here and the United Kingdom, thanks to Hurricane Johanna.

As soon as the elevator began its descent to the lobby, Rye broke the silence in the hallway. “Yeah, I better get running too. Tanya is probably wondering where I am.” He glanced toward the elevator and bit his lip, a smirk making its way onto his face despite his visible effort to hide it. “It was nice meeting you, Katrina. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” He turned to his brother and smiled affectionately, thumping him on the back. “I’m assuming you just wanted to make an intro and we’re all good here, right?”

“Yeah,” his brother said, and Katniss could feel his eyes on her, could feel him fucking smiling at her, and her cheeks burned in response. “I think we’re all good,” he added.

“Alright. Catch you guys later, then,” Rye turned around and padded back into his— _their_ —apartment.

Katniss watched him walk away so that she wouldn’t have to look at the brother standing in front of her—so close all she had to do was reach out and touch him. Across the span of Rye’s sunburnt shoulders were three star tattoos. The middle star had the letters “RM” in it, while the ones to the left and the right of it read “BM” and “PM.”

Three stars for three brothers, with Rye in the middle.

The youngest brother, then, was the one standing in front of her, his hands jammed in his pockets.

“Fuck it all to hell,” Katniss whispered to herself as the door shut behind him, and the sound of the man chuckling in front of her finally gave her the courage to look at him.

He didn’t look angry or annoyed about the assumptions she had made about him. He didn’t look smug or superior or like he wanted to lord them over her either. He was smiling, his face flushed, his eyes alight with—something. Amusement, definitely. And maybe also relief. Katniss’ heart sped up in her chest, thrumming so violently she thought she might collapse, overdosing on the way one look from him made her feel. And then they were all the things Johanna had said or alluded to—they were mortifying. She _ought_ to feel mortified.

But with the way he was looking at her now, she couldn’t bring herself to care if he knew she wanted him as badly as she had ever wanted anything in her life.

“So,” he said, “Jo is your best friend.”

“I’m afraid so,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. “And Rye… he’s your brother.”

He laughed in reply and nodded. “Yeah, I’m afraid so.” He pulled out his cell phone and checked the time. “I promised I’d only take up two minutes of your time before fucking off forever, and it’s been almost five.” He dropped his phone back in his pocket and exhaled heavily, his eyes meeting hers and holding her gaze, his cheeks the same shade of pink as well-kissed lips. “I’d say I’m sorry about that, but I’m really not.”

Katniss smiled weakly, knowing that if anyone ought to apologize, it was her. “I ah—” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, noticing with fascination how his eyes tracked the movement of her hand. “I don’t know where to begin,” she confessed. “I feel like I should be asking you now for a couple minutes… but is that enough? I’ve been so awful to you. I’m—I’m so fucking sorry about that. I can’t imagine what you think of me.”

He gave a crooked smile, the right corner of his mouth hitching up. “It’s okay, really. Maybe someday— _but not today_ , clearly,” he held up his hands in mock surrender, his tone teasing and light, “we’ll even be able to laugh about it.”

She laughed and looked down at her feet, her toe nudging the letter “F” on her welcome mat. “Sounds fair,” she said, biting the inside of her cheek to try to hide her ridiculously broad smile.

They stood in silence for several moments, Katniss staring at the fibers of her welcome mat so she wouldn’t stare at him. But god how she wanted to. She wanted to map the features of his face, chart out his freckles, track the line of his jaw, swim in the pools of his eyes. It was almost cruel, denying herself all of that now, even though she was certain she deserved none of it.

“Um,” he said at the same time she said, “So.”

They both looked at each other and laughed awkwardly, his quotation mark dimples framing his sweet smile. “Go on,” he encouraged her.

“No,” she whispered, suddenly wanting to hear everything he had to say to her—all the things, everything, for always.

_Shit. I’m such a goner_.

The realization terrified her. She knew what it meant, what it could do—she’d seen it for herself—but she couldn’t make herself care about it any longer. Because it was that terror, that desperate need to hold someone, to know and be known by someone, that separated the living from the dead. And she didn’t want to feel dead anymore. What was the point of building walls to protect yourself if it meant you never really lived? What would it even be like, to live for someone again?

“You were saying?” she prompted, her voice choked by the need to know.

“Well, if you’re not going to tell me to fuck off, there are some things I still wanted to talk to you about.” He took off his hat and ran his hands through his hair, that same stubborn wave of his insisting on standing bolt upright.

She felt such an affinity to that lock of hair for doing the one thing it thought was right, no matter how wrong it was or how foolish it looked. It was almost the dumbest thing in the hallway. Almost.

“Oh—” A fit of madness overtook her, and she stood up on her toes, reaching up to smooth the wave back down. His hair was as soft as she’d imagined—softer, maybe, and she resisted the urge to curl her fingers in it and tug him down toward her. “When?”

His eyes grew wide at her touch, his breathing labored. “Now?” he asked, his voice sounding like a rocky shoal being raked by the fingers of a receding tide.

“Okay,” she said without pause. Half an hour ago she wanted to crawl in her bed and die of fatigue, but now… now—

“Okay,” he said with a grin. He looked toward his apartment door, biting his lip as he mulled something over. “I have an idea.” His gaze fell to her dress. She couldn’t believe her luck—the one time in her life the odds had actually been in her favor—when she had grabbed it out of all the other rags she could have chosen in her closet. She didn’t even care that the sales tag was still on and itching the middle of her back. “Do you want to go out with me tonight?” he asked, the hope unmistakable in his voice.

“Like…out on a date?”

“Yeah,” he said, his breath audibly whooshing out of him all at once. He nodded and smiled at her. “Exactly like a date.”

She crossed her arms against her stomach, where she could feel her heart beating uncontrollably. Did she have a heart there? Could people have hearts in their guts, in their bones, in their muscles? A flock of birds took flight inside of her, starting in her belly, their wings fluttering and beating against her insides, desperate for freedom, fluttering everywhere, feathery wings brushing and tickling her and lifting her to the sky.

“Okay,” she answered, or possibly she only nodded.

“Alright,” he grinned. “Lemme grab something from my apartment.” He pointed to her feet. “You might want to put on some more comfortable shoes. We’re gonna be walking.”

“Psssht,” she pretended to scoff at him. “I’m a New Yorker. You don’t gotta tell me.”

He chuckled and began to walk away, freezing a few steps down the hall. Katniss hadn’t turned yet to go back into her apartment to change into flats before he was striding back toward her.

“I almost forgot something,” he explained.

Her mind ran through the litany of reasons he might immediately realize a date with her was a terrible idea. He had dusting he’d rather do. Or he wanted to watch paint dry. Or he was beautiful enough to score a date with Jennifer Lawrence, so why the fuck had he asked her?

“What’s that?”

He held out his hand and smiled.

“I’m Peeta.”

She reached out and took his hand, relishing the feel of his grip. His fingers were strong, his hand so large it practically engulfed hers, but his touch was gentle and warm. She held on tightly, dreading the moment when she would finally have to let go.

They stood there in the hallway, holding each other’s hand for a minute, grinning mawkishly at one another like children.

In the span of that New York minute, the city sighed, 4.27 babies were born, the lights atop the Empire State Building flickered from blue to red, and the long line of cars on the avenues began to move, their surging taillights like veins supplying blood to the city’s beating heart.

Nothing can survive without a heart, and in that minute, Katniss’ sped up, thrumming so hard her pulse danced in her fingertips, where it met and danced with his.

For the first time since her body landed on the pavement, as broken as the shards of glass surrounding her, she felt alive.

She smiled up at the man who’d given her that.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Peeta.”


End file.
